Tommy Denander - Less Is More
This is an unusual item in my collection, as I generally steer clear of instrumental guitar albums. Maybe you have to be a guitarist yourself to appreciate them fully. The other albums of this genre that I have in my collection are Marty Friedman (If ever there was a man who should give up his day job (Megadeth), it's Marty) and Al Di Meola.
The most obvious comparisons I can think of are the couple of instrumentals that appear on Journey's 'Time' boxed set.
I remember Tommy sending me Email a while back about tapes/trades etc. From this, it was clear that he is a big Toto fan and indeed the guys from Toto are present on this album. They co-wrote & play on the track '5492' and I think may have helped out in other areas. I'm afraid that my knowledge of Toto doesn't extend much beyond their IV album which spawned the hit singles Rosanna, Africa etc. However, I do detect Toto-isms throughout this album.
What I like about this album is that the other instruments haven't been totally forgotten about and used to provide an bland background for the guitar work. The songs have structure and melody, rather than being flourishes, at great speed, up and down the fretboard which some guitar albums seems to be. The title 'Less Is More' is appropriate, because this album is free from the excesses that spoil most guitar albums.
The tracks are all fairly similar sounding. Maybe this can be forgiven because, as far as I am aware, this is the first in a series of albums which will feature a variety of styles. The second album was released at the same time as this and reportedly features some Dream Theater sounding material.
The best track is '5492', featuring Toto members, which has slinky jazz/blues feel to it (kinda like Stevie Ray Vaughan meets Toto). This is the longest (10 mins) and last track on the album. It's an appropriate grand finale. Cooler people than me might say 'this one really shreds !'.
If I had a separate rating system for instrumentals then this would get a '9' rating (simply because of '5492'). But I don't, so, judged against albums featuring vocals, it gets one point deduced to make it '8'.
Rating : 8
