MORSE, ALAN – 4 O’Clock & Hysteria

Cover	Release	Style
	2007-04-23	prog
	Label
	www.insideout.de
	Website
	www.spocksbeard.com
	Contact
	-
	Playing Time	Cat. N°
	63:57	LC 03166
	Review by	Rating
	Danny	8/10
nederlands	Review
Alan Morse, guitar player of Spock’s Beard, releases his first solo album. If you are always surrounded by such excellent musicians, you must be tempted to use the same guys for your solo album and that’s what he did for part of the CD. Alan: “As great as Spock’s Beard are, I still wanted to have different people playing on some of the songs. I didn’t want the record to become another Beard album, and using other people allowed me to work on the record at times when the other Beard guys didn’t have time for it. “ The album opens with a real cracker, ‘”Cold Fusion”, a song that must have evolved from a jam session, but has grown into a piece full of guitar solos interchanging with keyboard solos and catchy riffs and melodies. “Return Forever” could have received the same comment but it changes halfway into an incredible riff duel between the guitar of Alan and the violin of Jerry Goodman (a.o. Mahavishnu Orchestra) So, a lot of Spock’s Beard guys around, even brother Neal plays keyboards and guitars and co-produced the CD, but it certainly hasn’t become another Beard album. There’s a lot of variation: from the shuffle in the very melodic track “Drive in Shuffle”, via the blues of “R Bluz” to “First Funk”, yeah you guessed right, a slow funky song. (Life can be simple ;-)) Whatever style the songs are doesn’t really matter, because every track is built up with beautiful melodies and shows how talented Alan Morse is. His virtuoso guitar playing is even more emphasized in the best track of this solo album, “The Rite of Left”, a progmetal solo piece containing an excellent melody and showing the speed and talent of Alan. I normally don’t really like instrumental guitar rock albums, but this one certainly deserves a place in my CD collection. I hope he will play a few of these songs during the next Spock’s Beard tour.
Musicians
Alan Morse: Guitars Eric Darken: Percussion Nick D’Virgilio: Drums Jerry Goodman: Violin Gary Lunn: Bass Dave Meros: Bass Neal Morse: Keyboards, Acoustic Guitar, Mandolin Ryo Okumoto: Keyboards Scott Williamson: Drums
Tracklist
1. Cold Fusion (5:14) 2. Return to Whatever (5:48) 3. Drive in Shuffle (4:21) 4. R Bluz (6:54) 5. First Funk (5:31) 6. Dschungel (4:59) 7. The Rite of Left (4:31) 8. Chroma (5:23) 9. Spanish Steppes (5:46) 10. Tracks 3 (4:23) 11. Major Buzz (6:08) 12. Home (4:59)


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