Search - Plankton :: 3

THESE GUYS CAN DO NO WRONG

HANS D HARMS | runaway bay, QLD Australia | 07/05/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"One of the most entertaining and amazing instrumental bands on the planet. Their musical vision is unique and never gets boring. They mix HENDRIXian sounds with FUSION and many other flavours. Both guitarists in this band are fantastic and compliment each other seemlessly. This is guitar instrumental bliss that very few other listening experiences can compare with. If you love the guitar ( or musik in general ), this band must be in your collection."

The best electric guitar instrumental band of this decade to

Smokey Lynx | Toledo, OH United States | 06/19/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is the third album by Plankton and is very fine . The band is from Norway and not only can they sho' nuff play their gitars enough to singe your wig , they write great songs filled with interesting ideas and plenty of space to draw in the listener to the soundscape they are creating. You'll want to keep going back to revisit their Plankton world and enjoy the compositions all over again via their album. The percussionist adds a rhythmic propulsion at times to the songs and things are mixed nicely up with time signature forays in places to 12/8 and 3/4 time . The passages with acoustic 6 string and 12 string guitar in places add a lot of contrast and color to the sweeping melodies they play and write. The points of the three T's are all here , Taste, Tone and Time . I especially like how all the individuals play off/with each other and the occasional musical quote dropped in by the guitarist from a snippet of Ravel or Jimi , it's gone in a second , did you catch it ?

The sound of the record is just great , very warm and the production and engineering are sooo good. Any fan of music by a band with excellent musicians like Robin Trower , Leslie West , Link Wray , Andy Powell , Laika + The Cosmonauts, The Mermen and James Marshall Hendrix will want this in their collection . It will be in heavy rotation on my CD player for some time. I don't know these guys, but I certainly think they deserve a lot of kudos for this album . It's tough to think of any thing to criticize here , even the artwork is cool !"

Acid blues rock with some jazz and prog tendencies...

Squire Jaco | Buffalo, NY USA | 11/17/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This unique band from Sweden sounds sort of like a cross between instrumental Stevie Ray Vaughan and The Flower Kings (minus the keyboards - you'll find NO keyboards here). Not unlike their previous 2 albums (well, three if you count "Rare Tracks"), they play pretty much in the same great sandbox of blues, a little trippiness, some jazz, and just great driving melodies. The melodic bass lines and precision drums might remind you of some of the great progressive rock rhythm sections; but the dual guitar sound with plenty of wah-wah and jangle keeps this squarely rooted in Hendrix-style electric blues rock. They can cook and groove like few other bands today.



Now, are these albums starting to sound a bit the same? A little....but they sure sound great! Personally, I'd like to see them stretch some of these cd's out beyond the 60-minute mark, which they could easily do with some nice extended jamming - haven't seen much of that yet from them. Here, you get 10 great songs mostly in the 4-6 minute range (total 52 minutes), and their rating gets dinged a little bit here by me for brevity. But Plankton is a very fine recent discovery for me, and I can easily recommend ANY of their fine discs.



I value interesting music that is played and recorded well. This cd's rating was based on:

Music quality = 9.1/10; Performance = 9.2/10; Production = 8/10; CD length = 8/10.

Overall score weighted on my proprietary scale = 9.0 ("4.5 stars")

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