Hear The Track Here
On a site that has almost 4m members (yay go Soundclick!) it's easy to miss a few, even for someone as diligent as me and my assembled minions (Ed: I think he means me). Ralph Atkinson is a new (but strangely familiar) name to me, probably because there are 90m of them out there. There again, there's a few Steve Gilmore's too so lets skirt this murky bog. Ralph is a blues rock musician from Canada, which is no surprise because the country seems bursting at the seams with them. Moreover, when I was downloading the review copy I noticed this nailed to the comment box: 'spacey, funky, bluesy - almost a ballad' DOH!Assumption pricks up its ears.
Mind you, I also noticed a comment somewhere that Ralph has been making music like this for a long time, and experience does count. It counts even more when you are working with a notoriously difficult genre to nail properly. Blues rock, ask any guitarist, is a true art - especially if it is to convince. A lot of the experience has also gone into the recording, production and mixing of Building a Time Machine which - to be honest - absolutely could not have sounded better. A lovely piece of technical work, that's for sure.
Best of all, though, is that Building a Time Machine is almost a ballad - and I really, really like it. From the tone of the guitars and the incredibly cool way they deliver the licks, stamps this track with authority from the getgo. At first listen the vocal sounded a bit too laid back but give it a second, third or fourth play and it too is pretty much perfect. Strangely enough, he reminded me of some of the work of our old friend 333maxwell, certainly in terms of quality. If you want to know why blues rock remains as valid as ever, take a listen to this.
MUST HAVE blues rock.
No comments:
Post a Comment