Favourite new album: "11:11" by Rodrigo y Gabriela

I expect I'll occasionally post comments about commercial music that interests me.  My tastes are quite eclectic, so you won't necessarily find a lot of consistency from one thing to the next.

So the "find" in the past month or so for me was the guitar duo of Rodrigo y Gabriela.  I hadn't heard of them before reading an article in GuitarPlayer [I think] magazine early this year.  Sampled a bit of their new 11:11 album on iTunes and decided it was a pretty low risk purchase.   I have to admit that the 11:11 album was very certainly worth the money.

The music on this album is primarily somewhat aggressive/percussive playing of a pair of classical guitars.  There are very occasionally other instruments, but that's the essence of it.  I like the sound of a classical guitar [still in the market for one eventually], but I'm not really a "classical guitar fan".  I tend to find the music a bit too, um, classical, for my tastes most of the time.  Rodrigo y Gabriela are apparently not classically trained, and the music here isn't classical.  In fact, there's even the occasional ripping solo run that stretches the boundaries of what I've ever imagined on classical guitar.

The overall feel of this album reminds me a lot of guitar god Al di Meola, where the use of a pick and thumping on the classical guitar body add a groove to the music not found in classical offerings.  I saw di Meola last summer at the Vancouver Jazz Festival, and his show was incredibly enjoyable.

My favourite track of the Rodrigo y Gabriela album is actually the title track.  11:11 employs a chord structure very similar to something I was toying with myself before Christmas, and that's perhaps why it sounded so "right" to me when I heard it.   The other track I thought was most excellent is Santo Domingo.  If you're not up for a new album, I'd suggest that you'd never regret dropping a couple of bucks on these two tracks.

By the way, I find this album doesn't carry particularly well in a noisy environment.  It didn't come across nearly as well driving in the car as it does sitting quietly at home or listening with headphones.  Lots of dynamic range with the classical guitars... well worth it when listening quietly.

While I'm almost talking about Al di Meola, I'll just record that one of my favourite albums of all time is one called Rite of Strings with Stanley Clarke on bass, Jean-Luc Ponty on violin, and di Meola on guitar.  The whole album is great, with the songs written by each of these guys reflecting their own focus, but working really well together across the board.

And perhaps finally, since I'm on the topic of classical guitar played for non-classical purposes, I'll say that I also bought Yngwie J. Malmsteen's "classical" album Angels of Love.  This was also inspired by a writeup in one of the guitar magazines.  I have to say that in this case, I think it was pretty much a mistake on my part.  The album's not bad, but I didn't find anything in it that I really love.  And frankly it's not an acoustic album, which I somehow thought it would be... it's still pretty blistering rock, but with the classical guitar instead of a Stratocaster through most of it.

Comments

[Dave]

BTW, I find that the big dynamic range of the music on 11:11 prevents it from sounding particularly good in the car. Better listened to in a place with less background noise.