Gabor Lesko: Fingerfusion Project

Rating: ★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Eric Marienthal (s)
Jimmy Haslip (b)
Gabor Lesko (g, p, ky)
Chad Wackerman (d)
Oscar Trabucchi (d)
Andra Cocilovo (b)
Mario Guarini (b)
Simon Phillips (d)

Label:

Self release

July/2020

Media Format:

CD, LP

RecordDate:

date not stated

Lesko's sweetwinged fingers go further down the prog route with this exuberant release. Well, it could hardly be less than exuberant with that battery of drummers behind him, especially Phillips and the aptronymically-monikered Wackerman.

Lesko gets touted as a Steve Vai acolyte, but there's a lot of 1970s Larry Coryell here too: the cascading falls and doubling of lines with Marienthal is reminiscent of Larry Coryell's work with Steve Marcus, notably on the moody romp of ‘Lost in You’. It's all splendidly proficient and it's no surprise that the pomp and circumstance of a song like ‘Faith and Glory’ gets featured as a recent Jazz FM song of the month: dramatic soaring sax, trademark volcanic drumming, it's hard not to be seduced. The likes of ‘Interstellar’ with another waterfall of an intro and its promise of chunkier rhythms only flatters and soon falls back into big anthem mode: splendidly cinematic, but dully predictable. A bit like the album as a whole.

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