Album Notes

This album brings together two world class avant-guitar masters, Gary Lucas and the Swiss guitarist Gerald Zbinden, for a soundclash of epic proportions. The pair met in Saint Petersburg Russia at the 2004 SKIF Festival where they immediately bonded, and vowed to come together for an improvisatory studio session that would display the full panoply of their guitar styles in a voyage into uncharted sonic realms. The result is "Down the Rabbit Hole", a glorious panopticon of refractory post-modern guitar as viewed through the lens of Lucas and Zbinden's protean shape-shifting, kaleidoscopic music and 6-string sorcery. The pair conjure up images of blasted lunar landscapes, melting arctic icecaps, volcanic molten eruptions from the earth's core. Joining them on some tracks are the peripatetic polyrhythms of free-jazz drummer Marcel Papaux.

Dubbed “The Thinking Man’s Guitar Hero” by The New Yorker, “The world’s most popular avant-rock guitarist” by The Independent (UK), “Legendary Leftfield guitarist” by The Guardian (UK), “Guitarist of 1000 Ideas” by The New York Times, “a true axe God” by Melody Maker, and “One of the five best guitarists in the world” by the national Czech newspaper Lidove Noviny, the British world music magazine fRoots recently described Gary Lucas as “without question, the most innovative and challenging guitarist playing today.” Rolling Stone’s David Fricke wrote: “Gary Lucas is one of the best and most original guitarists in America” in a review of Gary’s latest avant-rock album “Coming Clean”, which received 4 star reviews internationally. Gary was also selected by the editors of DownBeat Magazine as one of their “Hot 66 6-Stringers”, alongside John McLaughlin, Richard Thompson, B.B King, and other guitar legends.