Hello fellow guitarists! I thought I would give you a wrap up of 2012 by showing you my very own and personal picks of guitar albums of 2012!
I am sure you have your own picks and you might disagree with some of mine but you will also discover some great stuff on my top 5 guitar albums of the year.
*This list does not include albums released this year, but rather the albums that were always playing on my iPod and iTunes. I hope you like some or all of them.
1. Twisted Blues, Vol. 1 by Oz Noy – Oh my gosh, what can I say about Oz Noy and this AMAZING album? Let’s see, groove, virtuosity, groove, great technique, groove, amazing guitar voicing and oh yes, heaps of groove!!! Man, there are some big names on this record including: Vinnie Colaiuta, John Medeski, Eric Johnson and Anton Fig just to name a few.
This album is by far, my favorite one. Find out why:
2. Bill Frisell’s Beautiful Dreamers – Ambient, atmospheric, jazzy, crazy noises every now and then… that would define Frisell’s album Beautiful Dreamers. This is one of those albums that you can only play when you are alone doing something, it could be cooking or doing some type of homework, highly recommended if you are into Frisell’s experimentational craziness.
3. Side One by Adrian Belew – No words are needed, Belew is the mastermind behind the prog rockers King Crimson. On Side One Belew joins forces with Les Claypool from Primus and Danny Carey from Tool creating a super power trio that unfortunately has not continue since.
Every place Belew is present, you will hear odd time signatures and hypnotic guitar riffs and weird spoken words. A great album for whenever you feel like listening something unknown and strange. *If you feel like stopping the album after the fourth track, don’t worry, that is totally normal but don’t do it, the rest of the album is pretty awesome.
Get hypnotized by this track called Matchless Man:
4. David Gilmour’s, About Face – As I have mentioned before, I am a huge fan of Gilmour’s style. However, I never got into this album until this year, when I played it while chillin at home and I was like, “wow, just gilmour…”.
I am a big fan of the album called On an Island but this one has that retro sound, duplicated voices followed by his soft distorted Stratocaster accompanied by synthetic sounds. What else can you ask for?
5. Wayne Krantz Lefebvre by guitarist Wayne Krantz, bassist Tim Lefebvre and excellent drummer Keith Carlock. I am a huge fan of Fusion music. You know when a handful of amazingly talented players come together and have some musical fun, I love that! Hearing some good muso’s jamin´ is probably one of my favorite things in which to listen.
This is a great example, of course, there are ideas behind each track but you can feel that everything or almost everything came from a Jam session. Again, GROOVE comes into play on this album, Keith Carlock on the drums is in charge of that and believe me, he knows what he is doing.
Remember, it’s not fun not to like pop!
So what’s your take? What albums would make your Top 5 list for 2012?
Learn more about Luis Tovar on his Google profile.