Catching up on New Music

Given my complete gap in coverage last year, I'll quickly catch up a few music releases from the last year that I wanted to comment on. 

Dream Theater - Dream Theater - **** 4 Stars

Released last September, this newest album by Dream Theater was named for the band.  I always find this a strange approach for an established artist, but I see that it's rather common when changing labels.

I'm a relatively new fan of Dream Theater, having gotten onboard the bandwagon with the release of A Dramatic Turn of Events.  Since then, I've also purchased their original 1992 Images and Words, as well as Octavarium (2005).

The engineer on this album has a long history working with Rush, and I was quite surprised to find John Myung's bass sounding amazingly like Geddy Lee in a few tracks.  The tone was great, and relatively uncommon, but it kind of threw me.

This new album carries on the tradition of the Dream Theater music without any dramatic changes of approach. The songs are solid, and reminiscent particulary of Images and Words, I think.  The singing is solid, and of course the rest of the musicianship is really great.  In my view, this album is of similar quality to the others... the only one I have liked any better than this is A Dramatic Turn of Events, which I think is a completely amazing album (the rare "5 Stars" from me).

Rush - Clockwork Angels - **** 4 Stars

This album was actually released in 2012, and I had repeatedly seen references suggesting it's a great album... one of their best.  So I finally caught up with it last Christmas.

I liked the whole package quite a lot.  It's consistent and interesting.  The singing and playing is very good across the board.  I found that there were a few quite memorable tunes, particularly including Caravan and Halo Effect.  The title track is memorable, but I'm not convinced I really enjoy it that much.

I haven't nearly owned all the Rush catalog, but have been a longtime fan, and saw them live a number of times in the early 80s.  I have enjoyed a number of their albums, but always felt 2112 was the masterpiece.  I have seen comments suggesting this album rivals 2112, but I don't think it's quite that rich.  I do see the similarities, particularly in terms of it being a concept album (such a rare thing these days).

Overall, I think it's nearly a 4-star album in my rating system.

Ed Sheeran - + - **** 4 Stars

I'm sure I wasn't the last to actually listent to Ed Sheeran, but I took my time looking into his music.  I'd heard of him for awhile, and was seeing on guitar magazines, etc.  In the end, it was pressure from my 13-year-old daughter that got me to buy the album, though the disk is from 2011.  And yeah, disk... bought it on CD.  Go ahead and tell me I should buy vinyl instead.

I was surprised by this "Plus" album (I see it referred to occasionally as "The A Team", which is the first song on the album).  I didn't really have any pre-conception about what his music would be like, as I'm sure I never heard him on the radio (I don't listen often). It's mostly quite subtle... delicate and moving.  Ed's voice is high and he sings with a lovely tone and quite strong English accent in places. It's captivating, and my daughter agreed.

I don't generally buy much in the way of singer-songwriter stuff, but I'd say that's what this is, for the most part. It occasionally builds a decent groove, but most of the songs are downbeat. I particularly like the songs Grade 8, Wake Me Up, and the beautiful song of fatherhood: Small Bump.

Regardless of what sort of music you like, have a listen to "Plus" if you haven't heard it.  I'm glad I did.

Imagine Dragons - Night Visions (Deluxe) - *** 3 Stars

This is another album I bought at the suggestion of my daughter, and it was equally surprising to me, though not quite as inspiring as Ed Sheeran's. At least I'm reviewing a recording released this year!

I had heard one or two singles when I bought this, but hadn't listened much to the band.  I was quite surprised at the solid level of the songs, throughout the album.  The ubiquitous Radioactive is a pretty great song, and in fact I think it identifies the key aspect of the production across the entire album: the heavy drums.  Nearly all the tracks are dominated by really solid and heavy/echo-y drumming.  This brings the music a compelling drive that it might not otherwise manage, but I also found the drums a bit overwhelming.

Good songs, solid playing, and the singing is quite good.  If I had seen the performance on the Grammy Awardsbefore buying, I probably wouldn't have bought the album, but in fact the singing is great and the songs are really enjoyable.  Pop isn't my genre in general, but this album comes with my recommendation anyway.  Will I still be playing it 10 years from now?  Maybe not, but I'll get back to you.

Hopefully that's enough of a "catch-up" and I'll start looking forward to finding some new music to entertain me. In a subsequent post, I'll try to catch up on musical instruments that have come into my life over the past year as well.

Groove onwards...

Moving on...

Wow, I can't believe I let this narrative stagnate for a whole year.  Life is busy.  And then it's not... or at least you think it might not be.

I was recently canned from my employer of 9 years because they're restructuring where the work is done.  Old story, even for me.  However, before my last day there, I and a number of teammates got a renewed lease on life, working for the company in a different product area.  It's a good opportunity for us in a number of ways, so I'm still "there", but it's all new.

As part of moving to this new role, I'm also temporarily working in a different city, far from my family, friends, and bandmates.  An opportunity to explore places, technologies and musical inspiration, and hopefully to spend a bit more time with family who live closer to my new temporary home than to my permanent one.

The new location is Montreal, which is somewhere I worked for more than a year a long long time ago, before I moved to Vancouver. As a fitting first dinner last evening, I had Montreal smoked meat, which was excellent. Montreal is an interesting, ethnicly diverse city, and I'm looking forward to lots of great meals.

I also hope I can find my way around the local music scene, as I also think of Montreal as vibrant in that area. And meanwhile, back in my "bachelor pad", I have a minimal setup for making music, and hope I can make it work well for me.

I've written previously about how I find business travel both frustrating and inspiring.  I expect this experience will be no different, but am looking forward to the inspiring part... there's a LOT of possibilty there. For the rest... hopefully FaceTime will help keep family close.

From Beyond the Blogosphere

OK, well finally I return from wherever I really was for the past 6 months or more.  Pretty sad, really, that I couldn't get my act together for a blog post.  I have remained relatively active (for me) on Twitter, but this seemed more than I could manage for some reason.

Nevertheless, here I am again.  I'll keep this post to a quick update on everything, and hopefully follow up with more detailed discussion of a few specific subjects soon.

My Music

In brief, I've recorded virtually nothing in the past year.  The major renovation of our house was completed at the end of the summer 2011, and I should have been able to take over the new music room with gusto.  I kind of did that, but without getting around to recording in it.  That said, there's lots of music going on, whether it be noodling around on whatever guitar is handy, or getting together with friends for informal musical exchanges on a near-weekly basis.

I think I now have the setup I need to record all the instruments in the arsenal, and it's time to sit down and do just that.  There's always something new flowing from my fingers, though taming it to the point of a decent recording is more challenging.  I've actually been writing some lyrics in the past 6 months, which is almost a first for me.

I am significantly influenced (encouraged) by the musical interactions with my friends who come by weekly to share musical ideas.  Whether it's an attempt on a cover tune of some sort, or exploring originals from the guys, it's always interesting and pushes and pulls me to move forward.  I was sad to see a key member of our posse say goodbye at the end of 2011 and return home to England... his influence is still felt in the room, but sadly his great fingerstyle guitar playing is missed.  We've added a new face as a result, though, which pushes some new influences into play.  Always for me it's a good time when sharing music with others.

My Instruments

As is my nature, and my luck, I tend to find myself with new instruments every now and then.  Although I think of myself primarily as a guitarist, I'm by no means particular about it.  I welcome any instrument into my home.  And we have a couple of weird ones, which I suppose I should discuss at some point in the future.

Since last summer, there are a few new items of note.  For the most part, I tend towards quite affordable instruments (quantity over quality, perhaps):

• 1/2-scale Applause AA12 (by Ovation) steel string guitar
• Korg O1/Wfd Synthesizer (early 90's synth... quite used)
• Behringer Ultratone K1800FX Keyboard Amplifier
• Johnson JB110 5-string Banjo
• 10-string Electric Guitar (shown at right)

My Consumption of Music

The best concert I've seen in a long while was Joe Bonamassa, who I managed to see twice last December.  I drove to Seattle for the first show with two buddies, and had a really great guys evening out road trip.  Seats were way up high and off to one side of the auditorium, but the sound was great after the first few songs.  Two nights later, I saw Joe again with my wife, sitting in row 6 at the Orpheum theater in Vancouver.  The show was definitely better from close up, but the sound was pretty similar in both settings, and the sets were virtually identical.  I was sad not to see my favourite of his songs, though: Stop!  Ah, well, we can't have everything.

I have purchased a few albums over the past months (as usual), and this latest batch includes:

• Dream Theater -- A Dramatic Turn of Events **** [out of 5*... I think only Kinda Blue gets that score]
• Van Halen -- A Different Kind of Truth ***1/2
• Steve Lukather -- All's Well that Ends Well ***1/2
• Garrett -- Seventh Star ***1/2
• Five Alarm Funk -- Anything is Possible **1/2
• Corea, Clarke & White -- Return to Forever IV ****
• Chickenfoot -- Chickenfoot III ***
• Barry Greenfield -- The Early Years (1973 & 1975) [too dated to fairly rate: has some good material]
• Beth Hart & Joe Bonamassa -- Don't Explain ****
• Marcus Miller -- Marcus ***1/2

You can see that most of these have been pretty solid.  The one I have liked the most, and played a LOT is the Dream Theater album.  I wasn't previously a fan, but have found this to be enduringly enjoyable.

My Reading

In the area of music, I have enjoyed the following over the past months:

• When Giants Walked the Earth (Led Zeppelin) -- Mick Wall ****
• Guitar Boy -- M. J. Auch ***
• Guitar -- Tim Brookes *****

I also have enjoyed a number of other books, though I often find business inspiration from the music industry stories as well.  On the business side:

• What EveryBODY is Saying -- Joe Navarro, Marvin Karlins [Recently started as Audio book. Narrator is quite poor]
• Taking People With You -- David Novak ****
• The Steve Jobs Way (iLeadership) -- Jay Elliot, William L. Simon
• In the Plex (the Google Story) -- Steven Levy ****
• iWoz -- Steve Wozniak, Gina Smith ****

Novels:

• Freedom (TM) -- Daniel Suarez *****
• Locked On -- Tom Clancy, Mark Greaney ***1/2
• Against All Enemies -- Tom Clancy, Peter Telep ****

Well, as usual it's past bedtime, so off I go.  Thanks for reading.  Let me know what you're reading or listening to that i should have a look at.

Cheers

Dave

Turning up the Bass

My latest album purchase was one I hadn't heard of but maybe should have. Thunder is the rather apt name of the album by SMV -- Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller and Victor Wooten. Three powerful electric bass players bringing their groove together.

I'm actually not yet at a clear opinion about Thunder, which I find a bit odd. I'm generally pretty quick to judge. My first impressions were pretty positive, actually. I didn't really like the way the first track opens, though, which has me a bit off kilter. I think my current position on the album as a whole is "pretty good".

The signature sounds of each of these great players seem to be evident throughout the recordings. I find that the three of them play perhaps too similar styles to fully complement each other. So although there are some really great parts on here, many are just OK.

I think perhaps my favorite track on here is Tutu. The tune is very familiar to me from Miles Davis' Amandla album. The liner notes to Thunder say Marcus Miller wrote it. His playing on the track is definitely reminiscent of Amandla, though the arrangement is different enough on Thunder as to be quite fresh. Great tune!

I got turned on to Stanley Clarke in the late 90's with his East River Drive album. Really solid.

I was a bit skeptical of an album of three bass players. And although it has some really strong parts, I think the album Thunder as a whole rates 3 stars out of 5 on my playlist rating scale. It's pretty good for listening to on the road, because the bass carries well in the car.

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.