Genre : Instrumental Rock
Origin : Finland
Label : Mad Guitar Records
Official site : > - here - <
Mr. Fastfinger is a mainly instrumental-, massively guitar centered affair armed with a bravely-, eloquently expressed fascination towards the experimental language of Frank Gambale and Steve Vai, primarily. Think of jazz fusion that has the superb capacity of not taking itself lethally serious, BUT being relentless and scientifically serious at - well - not being serious. To put these contradictory phrases into more easily decipherable perspectives, think of the following compositional behavior : the music on the disc claims and praises the liberty to submit to any sort of dainty harmonic passage for a brief-but-sufficient amount of time, - I dare say that the harmonic passages always are elegant on the disc, in fact, I think they get better and better as the delivery progresses - yet the high frequency solo detail that the disc equally is about, has a highly adorable tendency to go top-of-the-heat quality on super-numerous occasions, when you scrutinize them from the angle of "mere" melodic power, and, from the angle of the articulated technical maturity and rigor they are executed with.
"Mountain Mover" is a definite highlight for me to showcase these traits, for example. I think this track makes Frank Gambale a happy man. See? He did not comment so far, suggesting to me to sit on an umbrella and open it. If you are familiar with the vastly significant experimental contributions of said virtuoso, - Steve Vai's Flexible Leftovers and Gambale's Coming To Your Senses both especially come to mind when having ears soaked into this stimuli - then you already have a silhouette for an impression to fill out later via an actual listening experience. Read on to find out more about this.
The music, thank God & Co., is 101% free of shameless guitar wankery and "lookwhaticando!" fretboard acrobatics, and the precise rendition of the intended musical picture always remains in focus-, and, under relevant flattery by adept technical skills that equally seek to entertain BOTH the player AND the listener. This almost always is the benchmark of luscious guitar playing. The meaning, and the desire for the perfect execution of it always reigns superior to the mere difficulty and/or the speed of the phrase, which, though sometimes doubtless poses charisma on its own merits, the timeless words of Joe Pass are hasty to come to mind when scrutinizing deliberately chased technical hardships: "I can play hard stuff, but I don't like to."
The global flow of things on the disc always maintains the ubiquitous intent to talk to you both separately and as a combined whole that reigns more organic and complex than its fragmented-, autonomous components, and I totally am content with the data, because I like what I hear when I hear what I like. It is funny that I just recently reviewed Slash's latest contribution, and expressed my qualms of how I think the album lacks the desire to exhibit musical evolution, and here is a disk that is all about the praising of the infinite number of possible sonic patterns and tendencies you have never heard so far.
According to my impressions, the disc sports a somewhat slower-, dare I say : restrained, but still acceptable beginning, and it takes a track or two until it really finds its rhythm and its range in the standup so to speak, to exploit some mixed martial arts terminology for the fun of it. By the time of track 10, "Daemons & Ghouls", the stimuli is reeking top of the foodchain instrumental music that brings to mind the days when Joe Satriani actually was into music creation and guitar playing yet. Yes, there were days like that. This song, "Daemons & Ghouls" reminds me of Satriani's superb masterpiece - tautology - "Crushing Day" from 1987.
The package weighs in as a serious and superbly executed loveletter for the positivistically humorless cultivation of experimental music in the sense that the disc does not seek to impress you with cheap solutions and/or bullpucky effect wizardry, and reigns content-obedient with the steep requirements it relentlessly needs to fulfill and bring to the table to be regarded as a contribution that successfully satisfies its own gargantuan ambitions. The kind of music featured on the disc is pervertedly difficult to construct, and delivering it in the form it reigns on the spin in, is of exceptional challenges. Highly recommended.
Follow this link to check the album out.
GyZ at Bandcamp.
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