Genre : Instrumental Melodic Rock
Origin : United States
Where to check the album out: > - here - <
Buy it now
Rahul Mukerji's debut effort is a straight-to-the-point guitar album, in which the Indian-born artist showcases apt capacities and talent at coming up with Satrianiesque riffage-galore, and, not surprisingly, the music on display works the best whenever Mukerji attempts to go beyond the influential ties via sculpting out an authentic musical identity, which especially is noticeable in the track called Children of I-2, which this reviewer considers the stone cold sober high point of the release. Satriani himself would snap his famous fingers in approval upon hearing the aforementioned declaration, as the Flying in a Blue Dream-influence-, although thematically present, yields music that immediately goes for the core of playfully morose gloom, and channels content right from the heart of it. Read on to know more.
The record has an interesting, albeit suspenseful quality to it, which separates it from your everyday fretfest: Mukerji's gravitational pull towards Indian note selections and progressions is quite evident-, although not over-intrusive throughout the effort, and this compositional method works best when it commands the entire structure under its influence, as is the case in the decent, ballsy conclusion of "Baisakhi", for example. Alas, Mukerji frequently is under the assumption that he needs to atone for channeling from intensely intriguing places, and a set of 3-4-, largely inconsequential deliveries litter an otherwise quite interesting flow. It is not to say that there is anything wrong with a monologues prisoner-guitar elegy like "Hope Anew", still, the song is prone to overstay its welcome as it evidently fails to notice of how it is being sinful of not only amending-, but glorifying stylistic paralyzis. Luckily, concluding track "Sinner" - ironically enough - ends the spin on a high note, characterized by brave rhythmic variation and colorful anatomies.
The structural variation is one key area that lets instrumental rock exhibit its most interesting machinations, and it also is one area in which this disk exhibits both its memorable peak moments and a fair amount of relative weaknesses on. From time to time, some of the tracks - even the title song - rely on very polite, risk free harmonic constructs that do not demand all that much from the ear, and Mukerji can't restrain himself from unleashing the Malmsteen as a form of subconscious over-compensation, convincing you on two separate occasions that he can play as many notes per second as Yngwie, in the exact same order, to the exact same effect, but the structure the notes are played on, coats you in the feeling of a sterile, persistent absence of an authentic idea, caught in the process of relentlessly overstaying its welcome, leaving you exhausted and being glad that you endured, at all.
The album ultimately weighs in as a decent debut regardless, as the peak moments easily outweigh the fillers by their sheer charisma, - and by the mere fact that work has been put into them - and there is little else to hope than the next effort of Mukerji will regard the rigorous invention and sculpting of colorful structural anatomies as the most paramount of tasks to be done, as currently the artist is mildly - and only mildly - suspect of amending sonic environments that are just too safe to be in, to be locked in, even though his music looks so much better when out exploring, instead.
Check out the album here.
GyZ at Bandcamp.
If you want, check out my music
and / or
Buy me beer.
No comments:
Post a Comment