If you are a musician and like guitar, you need to hear this album. Martone is a Canadian musician who is a veteran of the music scene. Clean is his fifth studio album. This is an all instrumental affair and as you can guess the guitar is the instrument of choice. The music is a tough one to describe. Martone takes basic rock and combines it with other musical elements like heavy rock, progressive, jazz, blues, and fusion and comes up with quite an interesting mix. Billy Sheehan, Greg Howe, Jennifer Barten and Joe Satriani drop by to help out. The main band consists of Martone on guitar, Daniel Adair (Nickelback) on drums and David Spidel on bass.
As I said earlier, musicians will really appreciate what Martone is able to accomplish on this release. This is a veritable smorgasbord of guitar techniques like tapping, sweep picking and arpeggios. The sound he is able to generate from his instrument is truly impressive. We all know, however, that talent alone does not always make music enjoyable to listen to. Fortunately for us, Martone is able to infuse a number of memorable melodies into his virtuoso playing.
"Nail Grinder" starts with a nice repetitive riff that eventual leads into a ripping solo by Joe Satriani. The playing on this one is all over the place, with varying degrees of speed and rhythm. In all this chaos there is quite a nice melody to be found proving that this is not just a shred fest. "Bossa Dorado" has a slight Latin/Spanish feel albeit at a fairly quick pace. The soloing here is lightning fast and very clean. "Dinky Pinky" starts with some ultra fast guitar scales that almost sound like a keyboard, before it slows down in tempo and delivers some progressive moments. The pace slows down with the pleasant "Coming Clean" with its emotional blues-like chords and soft percussion. A melodic lead guitar solo rounds out the song.
Every tune has its guitar highlights and I will let you discover the rest. This is a good disc and makes for quite a pleasant listen. If you are into instrumental guitar-based rock with stellar playing you will probably like this disc. It reminded a little of Oz Noy's Fuzzy cd released last year. If you are familiar with that disc it may be a good reference point. Recommended for guitar lovers everywhere.
Track Listing
1) The Goodie Squiggee Song (3:51)
2) Nail Grinder (4:25)
3) Bossa Dorado (3:43)
4) Dinky Pinky (5:57)
5) Coming Clean (5:36)
6) Hard Wired (4:04)
7) If I Was A Piano (3:28)
8) Moron Face (4:17)
9) Turn On The Heater (4:17)
10) Angel Fish (3:47)
11) Fading Into Change (2:52)
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