Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Potocnik
Label: Self-released
Release: 2017
Running time: 45:53
Rating: 4/5
Guitarist, composer, arranger and producer Igor Potočnik is best known as a member of California. A refined, seasoned musician who cut his teeth in plenty of bands, and as a studio player too, he has finally made the call to release a solo instrumental guitar-rock studio album, »Beauty«!
Igor wrote and created every song and every arrangement on »Beauty« himself, and he produced the album’s sound himself as well. He also played nearly all the additional instruments on the record and did the programming. The end result is a studio achievement that’s wildly varied in its ideas and sparkling with mischief, speaking to the listener with exceptional musicality. It delivers the kind of high listenability that instantly, irreversibly gets under your skin. Bubbling optimism runs through the whole album. Igor is an optimist by nature, and the record at times practically bursts with serenity, good vibes, playful impulses and bright intensities, which the musician’s positive thoughts and feelings channel through his fingers and his guitar.
The man is a huge perfectionist. Quite a few of the ideas for this album matured over a long time, since the songs are arranged extremely deftly from a compositional standpoint and are wildly catchy, the result of a knack for building compositions that grab you on the first try. Among the motifs, an incredibly flexible dialogue of deep mutual attachment flows constantly. As a whole, the album is therefore very fluid and develops very dynamically.
On top of the lead motifs, Igor of course delivers the musical language of the guitar. The character of the guitar playing drives this album from head to toe, from start to finish. For some inspiration Igor surely has Satriani to thank (the track Loud & Proud), but this is by all means an album with its own nature and sentiment. The songs carry a bigger or smaller dose of pomp theater, or bombast; especially in the calmer tracks a sense of solemnity (Hero) and even mystique (Odyssey) comes through. Igor translates the guitar language in his playing totally without pretension. Easygoing, relaxed, more laid-back and comfortable, that is, within the bounds he masters brilliantly, rather than allowing himself to wander off into musical experimentation. So »Beauty« doesn’t do well with complication, and you won’t find any on it. A well-judged measure of neo-classical elements shows through, and in some motifs you can even make out a bit of flirting with the melodies generated by the Gorenjska region. Take the opener Sunrise, for example. Around the halfway mark, Story cuts across the album with its own peculiar “boogie” character. Igor approaches throughout with refined, concise hand-crafted finesse, laying down and picking out delicate tricks with great feeling, adding important spice to the final optimization of the compositions. More than once the guitar playing and the added keyboard arrangements are intertwined almost fatefully, the way two sincere lovers can be intertwined in sensual perception (the closing Love). Then again, fans of more fired-up rock pulsers will get their fill on a rally ride with Igor, like the accelerated Downhill.
The man has outfitted the content of each individual track down to the last detail. Eleven tracks, eleven different musical stories and characters. The album takes the listener on a kind of drift. It sounds familiar, homey, already heard, yet at the same time it speaks in a special, different and fresh way. Listening to this record, you realize Igor had an enormous amount of fun during its creation and had a blast in the studio. You can really feel the guitarist approaching everything he tackles with great pleasure.
True to its title: an exceptionally lovely album full of rich, bold instrumental “comedies,” carved out with a sacred oath to the jurisdiction of guitar rock, the kind that hardly ever comes out of the Slovenian music scene. Which makes its value that much greater.
Lineup
Igor Potočnik – guitar, keyboards, bass guitar, programming
France Logar – bass guitar on tracks 5 and 9
Andrej Hribar – drums on tracks 5 and 9
Production
Igor Potočnik
Track list
1. Sunrise
2. Beauty
3. Going Home
4. Song
5. Loud & Proud
6. Story
7. Odyssey
8. Give Me Five
9. Downhill
10. Hero
11. Love
