First solo discographic opus with his compositions since 2012, and above all, first exercise of the kind since his Parkinson’s diagnosis (2023), guitarist Tim Brady once again demonstrates on For Electric Guitar why he is one of the most respected contemporary creators in the world for the development of a “scholarly” language of the electric guitar.
It’s a generous album that Brady offers us, as if he wanted to do as much as possible in the allotted time. There are only three works on the program, but they are all structured like vast, extensively developed monuments. The title piece, For Electric Guitar, is divided into three movements and unfolds like a concerto for solo instrument. Many changes in dynamics, textures and atmospheres run through the score. Tim Brady does so with brilliance, as always. The early stages of his condition have not yet severely altered his fabulous abilities. Really, Really Solo Electric Guitar Music, is a long reflection that bathes in a spirit of improvisation, or even that of the fantasy, exercised by the greatest soloists of the Romantic period in classical music. Brady expresses a portrait of the expressive possibilities of his instrument through significant, but rarely aggressive, dynamic contrasts. Above all, we witness an impressive demonstration of the musician’s digital subtlety, as if he continues to defy fate and thumb his nose at the disease.
9.75 Pieces About Change is an eleven-movement suite written just weeks after his Parkinson’s diagnosis. One might have imagined a piece oozing with blues and melancholic spleen. It is rather a collection of very diverse evocations, from contemplation to minimalist pulsation, passing through vast stretches of sound that do not really seem to come from an electric guitar.
An album that testifies to the exceptional genius of one of the greatest electric guitarists in history.
