hances are, you have never heard of Alessandro Benvenuti. That is because he resides in Italy. However, his new disc, Sonic Design made its way a great many miles to find Music's Bottom Line.
Benvenuti is an instructor as well as a working musician that is on the road quite often playing festivals and concerts with his fusion project and as well as his rock band called Alter Ego. He recently opened for Tony MacAlpine and Virgil Donati. Now that's impressive.
Not quite as impressive as Sonic Design. This amazing disc opens with "A Sense Of Change," which quickly erupts into a fast paced melody in which Benvenuti manages to take the listener to the brink of too many notes, but never crosses that threshold. Instead, complicated drum work from Armando Croce allows the sound to flow tirelessly.
"Eternal Dream" is a bit more of a ballad, but Benvenuti's phrasing keeps a predominantly guitar oriented disc to openly resonate. Benvenuti takes the first solo and allows veteran fusion guitarist Frank Gambale the opportunity for the second solo in the song.
"Time Has Come" begins a bit more awkwardly. Keyboardist Gian Marco Benvenuti uses a disturbing chord progression to get us to the melody. "Egocentric" again features Gambale along with Benvenuti trading licks, and then Gambale becomes the lone soloist.
The standout tune of the disc is called "10 KM More," and is a guitar duet with Prashant Aswani in the right channel. The disc concludes with "Jama," in which bassist Mirko Bellini forges some solo time behind Benvenuti's scratch guitar. Gian Benvenuti also takes a keyboard solo as well.
The disc showcases the amazing talents of Alessandro Benvenuti, and the feel of the disc definitely carries a heavy Greg Howe vibe. One can also hear the influences of guitarist Brett Garsed as well. Regardless of the influences, Benvenuti is a very credible guitarist and composer.
Where guitarist Greg Howe will work with a trio and also handle a lot of the bass on his solo projects, Benvenuti has decided to take a quartet approach. Although compositionally similar to Howe, Benvenuti takes full advantage of the full band. This project definitely focus' on large amounts of guitar, yet the music is extremely well written as well as performed, and Alessandro Benvenuti's ability to bring this music to life is astounding. SONIC DESIGN was completely unexpected, but delivered in a big way. Check him out at www.alessandrobenvenuti.com.
Bottom Line: Sonic Design has something for every guitar fanatic as well as the fusion music listener. An extremely well done debut solo project.
hances are, you have never heard of Alessandro Benvenuti. That is because he resides in Italy. However, his new disc, Sonic Design made its way a great many miles to find Music's Bottom Line.