Featured Artist: Trey Gunn

CD Title: Music For Pictures

Year: 2008

Record Label: 7d Media

Style: Progressive

Musicians:

Matt Chamberlain (drums), Pat Mastelotto (drums), Greg Gilmore (drums), Phil Petrocelli (drums), Beth Quist (voice), Trey Gunn (fretless guitar, fretless touch guitars, fretless touch bass, keyboards)

Review:

This 2008 effort by fretless touch guitarist/bassist Trey Gunn looms as a natural extension or perhaps progression of his evolving musicality, hearkening back to his initial solo albums and enlistment with legendary progressive-rock band, King Crimson.

Gunn perpetuates the visual via these multicolored vignettes, emanating from his multimedia scoring: 1998-2006.  He's the proprietor of this record label, which also serves as a multimedia production company.  With friends and associates such as King Crimson drummer Pat Mastelotto lending his wares on various tracks, the leader of this date fuses odd-metered metrics with world music accents, bustling rock grooves and more. 

Gunn’s fretless-touch bass lines project a tight and pronounced bottom-end sound.  He implements distortion/EFX tools to create semblances of tension and release amid a continual state of movement on various tracks.  Four drummers in total abet Gunn’s arsenal while vocalist Beth Quist provides an additional perspective on certain works.  The album is partly about broad, extended note phrasings, layered themes and electronics-based treatments to induce notions of pastoral settings.  Yet he perpetuates eerie imagery with minimalist type maneuvers during the final and longest piece titled “The Ghosts Listen.” Here, Gunn radiates a distinct sense of loneliness with low-key fadeouts and wave-like single note patterns.  For the most part, the artist weaves intersecting panoramas into the grand schema, where themes seemingly float over the horizon or come right at you with a vengeance.  Gunn’s craft is elevated to lofty heights throughout the preponderance of these curiously interesting and irrefutably appealing sequence of musical events.

Artist's Website: http://www.treygunn.com

Reviewed by: Glenn Astarita

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