Lawson Rollins - Espirito - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Elevation marks an expressive highpoint for composer and guitarist Lawson Rollins. Departing from conventional song structure, Rollins crafts 13 emotionally-charged soundscapes rich with moments of intensity and spaciousness. Featuring rich instrumentation performed by an eclectic ensemble of musicians recorded in Nepal, Iran, and the U.S., Elevation mixes Middle Eastern, Spanish, and Indian musical motifs with world beat rhythms and the distinctively modern guitar styling's of Lawson Rollins. Featuring Persian-American musician Shahin Shahida, multi-platinum producer Dominic Camardella, avant-garde guitar legend Buckethead, veteran producer William Aura, Nepali flute star Ruben Shrestha, tabla master Raju Maharjan, Grammy-winning violinist Charlie Bisharat, and many more renowned musicians. Album Tracks 1. Elevation 2. Voyager's Tale 3. Persian Night 4. Parisian Rhapsody 5. Santa Barbara Song 6. Daybreak 7. Shadows of Life 8. Himalayan Blue 9. The Wind at Dawn 10. Francisco's Dance 11. Slow Ascent 12. The Diamond Path 13. Ghosts of Alcazar

Broadly speaking, shredders are the pro wrestlers of music, trafficking in overwrought drama but devoid of soul, the realm of finger-tappers, fretboard lubricators, and those prone to viewing music as a competitive brawl. As such, the axe-slinger of conscience steers clear of shredding behavior, albeit every-so-often dexterously running the neck to tip listeners off that, you know, they 'really know how to play.' But for the typical avant-string consumer, shredding is beyond the pale.Which brings us to Cyrus Pireh's new Palilalia Thank You, Guitar, his latest stab at 'transcendental shred electric guitar music.' (Check out 'If I Can Play Fast Enough It Will Turn into Food and Shelter' on Bandcamp for a long-form embodiment of exactly what this means). Pireh, a self-professed anarchist and presumed enemy of music-as-sport, upcycles the 32nd-note neck sprint into a mesmeric boil played and recorded with little intervening electronic trickery other than a Digitech DD5 and mysterious amp modifications.The end result sounds like Pireh's plugged a quarter-inch jack into each of the listener's eardrums, a quick digital delay ping-ponging across the frontal lobes, the wet and dry signal of his 9-string axe all but indistinguishable. Indeed, Pireh views his maximalist double-handed scrabble as a mirror in which the listener might visualize all manner of details in it's rapidly self-propagating tonal and rhythmic tapestry.The title track, it's hairpin turns echoing Fred Frith's 'Hello Music'-another startling LP-opener-establishes this methodology immediately. ('What Are We Doing What Could Be Done', another Bandcamp track, taps this same ecstatic mojo). But far from languishing in razzle dazzle, each song tracks different tangential vectors, some (like 'Free Palestine') employing tape delay to smear the sounds into a muzzy, proto-psychedelic modality, with others stretching

Album Tracks 1. Innocence 2. Endless 3. Waiting 4. Sinister Encounter 5. Ever Onward 6. Discovering 7. Loss 8. Never Forget 9. Memories 10. Mystic 11. Forbidden 12. Striving 13. Visions 14. Apparition 15. Out of the Past 16. Haunting 17. Secrets of the Wind 18. Spirits 19. Through the Forest 20. Searching 21. Passageway 22. Unsettled 23. Corruption 24. Conflict 25. Undercurrent