It has been quite a while since I posted the first issue of this series. If you haven’t read it yet, here’s the opportunity to do so after all. The reason for the long pause is an album that I’ve been waiting for and one that I wanted to include. It was supposed to be released in early November, but problems postponed the release and it wasn’t until December that it became clear that it wouldn’t make it anymore in 2010. So, we’ll do without it for now. I won’t tell you more, not even who’s album it is, but you can be sure that you’ll hear from it later!

So, on to the actual post for today. In this second part we’ve got another three solo-artists, all making purely instrumental music. Stylewise they all fall somewhere in the range of Progressive and Math Metal.

Keith Merrow – Pillars of Creation

Starting, is Keith Merrow from Portland, USA. There isn’t much info to be found about the guy himself, as so often, which is why we’ll focus straight on the music. In 2009 he started to make it freely available for download on his homepage. In that year he completed an EP and a full-length album by the title of The Arrival. Since then, he also released a second album, Awaken the Stone King (on January 1^st 2011), which however isn’t free anymore.

What’s pretty special, is that he managed to convince Jeff Loomis, from Nevermore, to record some guest solos for the album. Still, none of the songs really convinced me, so instead of going with a new song, I decided to stick to one off 2009’s album: the song Pillars of Creation. The catchy main riff, also used in the short 8-bit intro, sticks!

Jakub Żytecki – S.W.I.S. Song / Disperse – On the Wings of a Dove

I’ll introduce you to a young, very talented musician from Poland now. Jakub Żytecki is only 17 years old, but it already playing very impressive music. I found out about him though a collection of his demo songs that was available for free download here.

His style can be described as Ambient Metal, because most of his songs are characterized by atmospheric tunes, over which Mr. Żytecki jams his guitar. S.W.I.S. Song is one of the 14 songs on the demo pack.

Find the guy’s MySpace here!

So, when I was doing the research for this post, I discovered Mr. Żytecki is also playing in a band, obviously as the lead guitarist. The band’s name is Disperse and has coincidentally released its debut album Journey through the Hidden Gardens last year. Although it doesn’t quite fit the One Man theme, I still decided to throw you a track off that album too, basically because I bloody liked it!

So, Disperse: the band was formed in 2007 by Jakub Żytecki and Rafał Biernacki (vocals and keyboard), who met each other in music school. After they found a bassist and drummer, they recorded a promo EP and later also that first album. Talking about their style, I would sooner call them Progressive/Fusion Rock than Metal, but what the hell. Atmospheric keyboards, electronic fiddling and Żytecki’s guitar play define the sound, and there’s clean singing on top of that. The result is a harmonic whole, which one can only enjoy! Considering that the band, and its members, is still very young, there’s a lot more to expect here!

Musically today, I picked one of the few songs of less than five minutes length, because with the longer tracks it generally takes a couple of minutes before it really kicks off, which for sampling purposes like this isn’t really suitable.

As usual, if you need to know or hear more, MySpace is the place to go.

Kevin Suter – Sonitus in D

To close off, just a small reference to Kevin Suter, who’s also from the US of A. All of his songs are available for free and legal download on the dude’s Bandcamp Site. If you like the next song, poke around there, because he’s already uploaded a host of them.

Tags: American, Djent, instrumental, Polish, progressive

This entry was posted on Monday, January 17th, 2011 at 8:00 am and is filed under Music Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.