Guitar Noise

Autumn Acoustics is a compilation album from various artists on Solarise Records in the UK. This album is a very nice collection of beautiful music and definitely one you want in your library!

A self-produced album, one guy playing all the instruments, and it gets one of my rare 5 star ratings! An amazing disc from start to finish from an exceptionally talented artist.

A quality album, one of the best things to come from a guy who’s definitely been around the music business quite a while. While there are elements from different stages of Hughes’ career (Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, the Hughes Turner Project and various solo pieces), this album has a flavour all its own.

Linda Finkle’s voice is certainly more than pleasant. Her songs, quite well written and the performance is good, but there’s such a thing as an overdose of patriotism and this album is full of it.

A new Billy Idol album? The production is sleek and incredibly well done and with guitarist Steve Stephens and former Dream Theatre keyboardist Derek Sherinian backing you up, you can’t go wrong.

A beautiful album of instrumental jazz music that you’ll want to list to over and over again.

The debut disc by one of the earlier line-ups of Kansas! Confused? Don’t be! Just listed to this fantastic album.

Steve Hackett and the Underworld Orchestra: Metamorpheus
One of the things I absolutely love about Steve Hackett is that you can hold your breath between recordings; Hackett is at a point in his career where he’s coming up with more stuff than ever. And I hope he continues!
Metamorpheus is the natural follow-up to 1997’s A Midsummer [...]

A very interesting album from another great Scandinavian band, this is a blend of good old Classic Genesis and heavy metal. The disc grows on you after several listens and the beautiful voice of Sylvia Erichsen is certainly worth listening to!

Roine Stolt of the Flower Kings is one of the most prolific songwriters out there. Here with his band The Tangent (with two others of the Flower Kings on board), he brings us five new pieces.

Progressive Rockers Happy The Man got back together to create a new album. With its sleek production, this CD takes the listener through various landscapes.

Three terrifically talented musicians (Glenn Snelwar, Michael Manring and Mark Zonder) team up to make this great album. It’s a treat right from the very first note!

Pinkeye d’Gekko are back with a new album which has less country influences than their previous effort and is, overall, a better disc.

Four very talented and very different guitarists indulge in playing their own compositions. They favour us with the best they have to offer in both composing and playing. The result is an incredible album with everything blending in together so perfectly.

A new solo effort from the Flower Kings’ keyboardist is always something to look forward to! Is it as good as Pinup Guru? A-J definitely thinks so, even though Sonic Boulevard shows us a side of Bodin that we’ve not seen before.

Trent Gardner’s Magellan are back with a new album. Impossible Figures is an album that marries different styles. One will find heavy keyboards, in the genre associated with Jean-Michell Jarre or Tangerine Dream, yet the overall sound quickly reminds one of Yes.

If you think you’ve heard Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore play the guitar, get ready for a surprise, for something that will blow you away. Here he matches up his guitar work with the lovely voice of his wife, Candice Night, on this compilation of love songs from the first four Blackmore’s Night CDs. This album is a great introduction to their music.

If you go to any major art museum, chances are likely you’ll see a student or two dutifully attempting to copy an old master. This is one way that people learn to become great artists themselves. And since songwriting is an art, why can’t this idea apply to songwriters as well? A-J shows us that it certainly can be a way to improve your own writing or to at least help you get out of a rut.

In 2003, after more than 40 years together, The Shadows decided to bow out gracefully. And they did it in full-style! Musically, the CD and DVD are identical: a whopping 42 tracks!!! (the DVD is 180 minutes long!!!) That’s not a typo…

Who was Syd Barrett, really? And what really happened? This DVD sets the story straight. Told from an objective point of view, with interviews with the members (and former members) of Pink Floyd, who knew the guy, and with other musicians who played with him, this is a very informative and interesting DVD.