ALEX MASI – Late Nights At Desert’s Rimrock

Alex Masi certainly is not new to the game. Starting out with the band Dark Lord in the late seventies/early eighties, he moved from Venice to Los Angeles in the latter half of the eighties where he played with a band simply called Masi, releasing Fire In The Rain and Downtown Dreamer in 1987 and 1988, respectively. In 1989, it was time to go solo with Shark Attack, which was nominated for a Grammy. A string of albums followed throughout the 90’s. Most of his work so far in this millennium have been tributes to Classical heroes Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, and he also has plans of further Classical music recordings. With the MTM project a couple of years back, Masi collaborated with drummer John Macaluso and bassist Randy Coven, dabbling with Indian music amongst other things.

Macaluso also joins on Late Nights At Desert’s Rimrock, which sees Masi handling bass as well as guitar. The music varies greatly in tempo, if not too much elsewhere, and is not particularly accessible, though at times enjoyable. The bass playing is often Funky in its punctuated delivery, while the drums are eclectic and worth attention by themselves. Actually, the playing in songs like “Vagina Denata” could have worked as drum solos, had they been performed without the other instruments at hand. Just goes to show how entertaining drum solos can be within songs. Rhythms are “non conventional” in songs such as “Antistructure” (now that’s a descriptive title!), while “Love In Resonance” can be imagined as sort of a ballad had vocals been added. Masi himself has a sound that stays the same throughout, but crams a host of different playing styles out of the guitar, which is really what this album is about more than anything.

“Tiktaalik In Evolution” incorporates Black Sabbath’s ”Iron Man” riff in a clever way. “Telling England By The Sound” as well as “You Asked” has some of the repeated guitar melodies that Instrumental music depends on to make it memorable, but unfortunately there’s too little of that present on Late Nights At Desert’s Rimrock as a whole. “Unsolved” has sound effects that conjure up images of a windy desert, which obviously suits well when taking the album title into account.

The songs display great technicality, but ultimately fails to draw you in to be a part of it. This is good music, but seeing as it only concentrates on the technical side of things, and seemingly very few actual traditional songs, it will probably not make much in the way for attracting possible new listeners.