Search - Buckethead :: Cyborg Slunks

Buckethead continues to push the boundaries

M. Ryan Fairbanks | Cleveland, Ohio | 05/01/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Cyborg Slunks is a new collection of experimental songs that features Buckethead accompanied by the "Slunk Percussion Ensemble" conducted by Albert. This means the usual guitar insanity he is renowned for accompanied by equally bizarre percussion sounds resulting in some pretty wild sounding music to say the least. Cyborg Slunks is actually a concept album of sorts as all of the tunes are part of a short story contained in the liner notes of the album, which is a nice change considering most of his releases are a single double-sided insert as far as album art is concerned. The recording consists of a mere 5 tracks that are all completely different.



Sneak Attack-a rather lengthy guitar shred fest that covers many of the bases and trademark licks he is known for. Set to the cyborg slunks planning to attack Bucketheadland.



Reopening of the Scapula Factory-Perhaps the strangest track on the recording, this is an acoustic guitar shred frenzy set to ten minutes of off-beat dissonant perussion. Describes the factory that creates the cyborg slunks, makes for quite an interesting listen.



Infiltration-A slow mellower track with bluesy guitar and bass. Describes the cyborg slunks infiltrating the park, nothing particularly special but not too hard on the ears.



Aunt Suzie- Amazing clean tone guitar loop with a mellow improvised solo played over it, my favorite track on the disc. This is the only track that has nothing to do with the story, it is a tribute to his late Aunt Suzie.



A New War is Underway- Rather lengthy track of dissonant guitar and percussion set to the battle that is underway in the story. By far the weakest track and becomes close to unlistenable on several occassions.



Overall it is a very interesting collection of material, although this is most definetly for hardcore fans and will not serve as a good introduction to newcomers. Cyborg Slunks was also released as a limited edition album featuring a hand drawn and numbered album cover by Buckethead, still available at www.tdrsmusic.com. If you like experimental, avante garde, or just plain strange guitar music that pushes the limits, this would be an album for you.

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