Chewy
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Take A Stroll Thru The Village
This is one helluva of a cd AND a bargin. The styles of music are all over the place & that's just one of the great points about this. You get Rock, Jazz, Blues, World, styles of music that are hard to classify...other then to say original & a whole lot of guitar. Bass players have been without frets, so why not giutars??!!! If you're the type of listener that likes to hear a whole bunch of different & interesting, then do yourself a favor & get this cd.
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Mikolaj Furmankiewicz
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VA - Village of the Unfretted
You can find atypical introduction in this double CD's booklet: "There is a transition phase, from guitar to fretless guitar. It's like walking all your life on Earth and then suddenly finding you can fly. All the fixed points you relied upon are gone, you are UNFRETTED", haha. Only one glance at the cover and all is clear - a sparrow stopped short on a guitar's string and picked frets off the guitar neck.
An English guitarist and producer, Jeff Berg gathered 35 composers of 16 countries on two CDs. All of them are distinguished by the fact they play the music on fretless instruments. It's worth mentioning a luthier Patrice Vigier whose instruments belong to most famous stringed ones of such a kind (particulary his "Excalibur Surfretter"). Many recognizable musicians play or played his instruments, e.g. Gary Moore, Ron Thal, Jean Beauvoir, Shawn Lane and Franck Vigroux. The latter one is even called a "godfather of fretless guitar". Especially for Poles, it's important that Ryszard Latecki also went down in that instrument history and made a half-fretted guitar "The Latar" in 1996. There is also my compatriot on the compilation - Andrzej Izdebski, Warsaw based specialist in improvising. As far as the history of "Village of the Unfretted" is concerned, there wasn't nothing to it, haha. "Fretless Guitar Festival 2005" held in New York and it was the main driving force to publish that compilation.
As regards its contests, it is very diversified: fusion, jazz, avant-jazz, progressive, experimental, blues, world music, Balkan, Hindu, Asian, ethnic music, guitar ambient, and even "Appalachian trance metal", as Erik Hinds characterized his own style. As you see, genres' multifariousness is considerable, so you will be able to pick up something for you. I admit that we persistently deal with a highly specialist music being performed by the greatest, most famous (without a few names) and world's contemporary fretless guitarists and bassists. For hard rock and metal music fans, it will be just a pure improvisation, rather making them think of a sound check before the gig than the music to listen, haha. I am a honest person, so I allow me to recommend that double CD only to those ones who like plays with tones of characteristically intelectual nature.
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Infinite Ego
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in short, a must have guitar recording
Give the boys at www.unfretted.com a huge round of applause for moving the collaborative and thematic recording project benchmark forward by at least a mile. A review of this double album is virtually unnecessary insofar as it is, in my opinion, essential for any fan of guitar – fretted or fretless: well-known guitarists like Ned Evett, David Fiuczynski, Ron Thal, and Elliott Sharp, among others, are represented; the recordings and overall sound quality are high; the project covers many styles of music (there’s fun for the whole family); unfretted went all out in delivering a professional product; and most importantly, the music is great across the entire two CDs. Village is sure to be warmly received by the guitar community and serve as a tremendous platform in promoting the fretless concept.
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