UK prog guitar wizard Matt Stevens has releases his second "in concert" album. Live In Blackpool was recorded on May 19that The Beat Club during the inaugural edition of the Electric Garden festival. Once again Dave Elliot took care of the recording of the gig.
For his set Stevens selected tracks from his two solo albums Ghost and Echo, indulging into more guitar solos in order to capture the audience's attention. For the uninitiated it's hard to swallow the fact that it's just him playing guitar using wide array of effects - whammy pedals, Ebows, volume swells, lager, backwards loops. Stevens is a the forefront of the below the radar neo-prog movement in the UK. With Live In Blackpool he proofs that you don't need vocals to tell an interesting story. Sure, it's rough around the edges at times - that's what you get with "fly-by-wire" approach. A track like Burning Bandstands sounds more urgent and Scapegoat gets an avant-garde folk treatment, with Stevens in true Svengali mood.
Live In Blackpool is a self-released album. Buy it from his website. Any money raised from this album will go to finish the recording of Relic his next studio album, which is the final part of Stevens' guitar trilogy.
Tracks:- David Intro
- Rusty
- Burning Bandstands
- Dolls House
- Scapegoat
- Moondial
- 8.19
- Big Sky
