Artist: Gilbert, Paul
Label: Shrapnel Records
Release: 2010
Duration: 59:42
Rating: 3.5/5
What’s even left unsaid about this mad guitar scientist, sorcerer and shred wizard Paul Gilbert? Mr. Gilbert is an idol to loads of aspiring guitarists, a guiding light on their road to finding their own voice and building a musical profile. Paul Gilbert is known as the ultimate Mr. Big guitarist, and those of you who are a bit more curious and have a pinch more musical education will also know all his work with the mother band Racer X. Paul Gilbert is also a great friend of Slovenia. He’s played our stages three times in the last four years. Maribor in 2007, then Ljubljana in 2009 and 2010!
The new studio album is called “Fuzz Universe”, and on it Paul keeps digging deeper into and cementing the path of artistic individuality that the previous album, “Silence Following By The Deafening Roar”, embodied and laid out. “Fuzz Universe” is, in other words, its sequel. Between 2008 and 2010 Paul was up to his neck in work. He witnessed the Mr. Big reunion, the recording of a new Mr. Big album and the Mr. Big reunion tour. And more than that! Together with singer Freddie Nelson he put out a real oddity of an album last year, titled “United States”. And on top of all that, Paul piled up enough new material for “Fuzz Universe”.
A schedule this packed with variety is surely more than welcome, since living such a busy everyday life can leave a genuine imprint of the artist’s psychophysical state at a given moment on any album further down the line. Expectations for “Fuzz Universe” were similar. But “Fuzz Universe” doesn’t bring any ear-catching, revolutionary departure from the stylistic and sonic blueprint of its predecessor “Silence Followed By The Deafening Roar”. It’s simply its continuation, and in that respect these are two very closely related albums.
On the new album Gilbert delivers 12 instrumental tracks, where his first concern is tight, compact structure. There’s no fragmentation of themes across the record, and no hard-to-digest excursions into musical experimentation that would smell of avant-garde. Gilbert is a classically trained guitarist who expresses his profile through songs built on neo-classicism. The opening title track already serves up exactly that kind of trick, with Gilbert spinning through unflinching “shredding” inside the carefully built frameworks of predictable classical flourishes. The track Fuzz Universe is a burst of adrenaline rush that, with a potent riff that practically invades your ear, wins the listener over in an instant and keeps them fully alert!
Paul made sure the album is rich in thematic variety and diversity, just as he did on its predecessor. Olympic is steeped in solemnity, defiance, perseverance and unyielding resolve. Those are the attributes of a born champion’s spirit, just as the title suggests, and the track sums up that message effectively through the very design of the composition. Will My Screen Door Stop Neptune and Plasitc Dracula are two more lavishly built neo-classical moments on the album, where Gilbert feels more than at home and is in his best element.
“Fuzz Universe” also carries that streak of goofiness that’s unique to Paul Gilbert’s presence among the guitar rock crowd. We first bump into this “mischievousness” on the album in the track Count Juan Chutrifo. The song has some striking parallels with the Yes track The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus) from the album “Fragile” (1972), especially when you compare Paul’s ideas with some of the bass lines by Chris Squire that make up the melody of that Yes song. It’s quite possibly a coincidence, but the fact that Gilbert played a Yes cover, The Rouondabout (album “Fragile”, 1972), on the Fuzz Universe tour makes that chance drastically less likely. It’s simply very probable that over the last two years Gilbert discovered a new enthusiasm for that classic Yes album, and poured a bit of its magic through his fingers onto tape. Mantra the Lawn and/or Don’t Rain On My Firewood are two more moments of sparkling mischief, where in the closing section Gilbert cuts loose with his ultrasonic ferocity and once again shamelessly, in a blaze of full-on vehemence, proves why he’s one of the fastest guitarists ever to crawl across the face of the Earth. Improvisation is the soul of this album. It’s the element that drives Gilbert and keeps him in creative momentum. With it, Gilbert justifies everything. In his solo excursions he’s adorned with daring streams of elusively fast melodic runs and effective solutions that create a mild sense of unpredictability, and through all of it he never strays, not even for a moment, into any complex moves that would make the album harder to crack.
Blue Orpheus feels much more serious in its dark dreaminess, and here Gilbert briefly leans on delay effects to build a backing bed that he then dives into headfirst with his improvisational streak, adding a special experiential moment to the album.
Bach Partita in Dm is Gilbert’s expected foray into playing the classics the electric way. Totally stripped down, strictly played in single-note unison. Let’s be honest. Paul doesn’t need these stretches of classical “electric purism” to flex his long fingers, since he shows off all those skills in other, more expressively broad tracks, in a far more refined and more effective way. It’s filler time, a moment on the album that nobody would miss if it were cut.
The funk-driven Propeller makes no secret of its eager flirting with jazz, while Gilbert diligently makes sure his vocabulary stays accessible to the brain’s association cortex throughout. The track Blowtorch serves up an excellent blend of everything. This song is Paul Gilbert “in miniature”. It has that expected moment of a classically shaped lead phrase and a real break into a progressive adventure in the middle instrumental jam, where the range of the great Jeff Bowders’ drumming really opens up, and even Gilbert’s guitar, which we’re used to faithfully sticking to basic school-book figures, squints a little in the spirit of experimentation.
The album captures the feel of a live-sounding studio jam, which doesn’t take the listener far from the concert experience with Paul Gilbert either. Bassist Craig Martini and drummer Jeff Bowders remain a mandatory part of Gilbert’s inventory, both on concert tours and in the studio. The songs have a lively charm and feel as if the trio had played them at a shared studio gig. That means the production kept the authentic sonic and energetic pulse. The album also gives off a sense of extraordinary cheerfulness, spontaneity and expressive ease. So it’s no trouble to stick a label of full artistic authenticity and one-of-a-kind uniqueness on it, even though Gilbert isn’t offering the world anything it hasn’t heard before from under the roof of his creative genius. “Fuzz Universe” is therefore also an essential investment for all guitar rock connoisseurs. A new very, very good album from the unique artistic talents of Paul Gilbert!
Lineup
Paul Gilbert – guitar
Craig Martini – bass
Jeff Bowders – drums
Emi Gilbert – keyboards
Ryan Giammo – percussion
Production
Paul Glbert
Tracklist
1. Fuzz Universe (7:05)
2. Olympic (5:59)
3. Count Juan Chutrifo (3:10)
4. Bach Partita in Dm (3:28)
5. Blue Orpheus (5:09)
6. Will My Screen Door Stop Neptune (4:19)
7. Propeller (4:49)
8. Don’t Rain on My Firewood (4:41)
9. Plastic Dracula (4:52)
10. Blowtorch (5:42)
11. Mantra the Lawn (5:36)
12. Batter Up (3:05)
