This
is guitarist Cloux' debut cd. He has been diligently studying his craft
for some years now, and has now put forth the effort to create 'Full
Fool", a short but compact cd that is chock full of technical metallic,
instrumental guitar fun.
This cd touches into the obscure and rare territory of technical metal.
A genre very few artists are willing to venture into, merely for the
fact that the audience for this music is collectively small, yet very
dedicated. Other bands and artists that exist under this category are :
Spastic Ink, Actual Time, Spiral Architect, Ron Jarzombek, Watchtower,
Behold..The Arctopus, and nary a few more.
Cloux definitely calculates his time measures and rhythmic
accompaniment in a very structured and disciplined way, much like these
other musicians in this style do, yet he manages to put his own
fingerprints on his music, it also offers some nice melodic guitar
playing to coincide with all the odd metered structures. When the
situation allows, he also shows a deft touch as a lead guitarist,
showing hints of Steve Vai, Mattias IA Eklundh and Ron Jarzombek as
possible influences. I enjoyed this cd a lot, from the first song to
the last, it was playful and serious at the same time, some vocal
zaniness was added to compliment the music's carefully constructed time
changes.
I really cannot find fault in this release, everything sounds
exactly the way I am sure Cloux meant it to. He employs drum
programming, and it was masterfully done, with great tone and patches,
although for selfish reasons it would have been nice (and impressive!)
to hear a real drummer playing to this kind of music, as it is very
challenging music from a drumming perspective, and having heard what
players like Bob Jarzombek, Asgeir Mickelsson, or Rick Colaluca can do
with similar musical challenges. Perhaps next time? My only other
problem with Cloux' new cd is that it is so short!
http://www.guitar9.com
Every guitarist dreams of being a guitar hero to impress someone
else than their sister. Many tried and released one or two albums, but
none of them really ranked high in the history of guitar… main problem:
not the lack of abilities but the cruel lack of originality, of
personality.
What about Cloux? Well, this French guy is not the new guitar god,
no need to bow at him, and he won't change History with his record… BUT
at least, this guy got that something many are lacking: his own style.
Cloux is not ripping another guitarist's talent like many do.
All along the 6 tracks of the CD, you'll hear that the particular
way he has chosen to play is not the easiest to listen to, with many
breaks, with some highly deconstructed passages and others more lively,
a bit groovy and supported by some bass slap. But it's all very well
linked, and comes in a natural way, yet still surprising.
Even though all the tracks range in the 3 minutes, with the same
musical tricks, they all stay in your mind somewhat different. Of
course 2 tracks stand out, because they're not completely instrumentals.
On "Human Being", Simon Fleury repeats two sentences, in a semi
growling voice: "I'm not an animal, I'm a human being!" (from the movie
The Elephant Man) and "May the Force be with you" (guess), and on
"Burp"… well, he… burps (!), but also explain us what is a burp (very
surprising definition I must say).
Yeah, this album is not super serious, as the title clearly
suggests. Full Fool is one of those albums which are just pleasant to
hear, for unknown reasons. Plus, it's quite well produced, even though
it's nothing special, it's nothing bad. You can hear all the
instruments perfectly and everything sounds credible.
In fact, the biggest problem with this album is that it may be too
"shy". It would have been cool to bring more diversity, by using even
softer or extreme passages, or something more ambitious for example.
Yet it remains a very pleasant attempt, a good start!
http://www.metalstorm.net