Alberto Rigoni - Rebirth

Don't let the cover put you off! Not my cup of tea at all, but ultimately irrelevant to the music contained within.

Alberto Rigoni is a bass guitarist and composer, and member of prog-metal band TwinSpirits, and founder of an electro-pop duo Lady & The BASS (the latter unknown to me I admit). This, his sophomore solo offering, boasts contributions from Gavin Harrison, John Macaluso (Ark, Malmsteen, TNT) and others and together they produce a polished album with obvious high production values.

The music on this album is mostly low intensity instrumental jazz-fusion, and the title track in particular highlights Alberto's fluid chops to great effect. Other songs are not so dominated by the bass guitar, and there is some fine guitar picking on Story Of A Man for instance, and the general feel so far is of a laid back soundscape washing over the listener in waves. Ideal listening after a hard day's work, study, or whatever your monkey is.

So far so good. However, with the fifth song the atmosphere is ruined by the sudden inclusion of the FM rock friendly Emptiness, replete with that awful generic American style guitar squalling and vocals you'd cross the street to avoid, stuff you've all heard a million times before. It sounds like something Foreigner would write in their sleep. If that's your bag then fair enough, but in my opinion Emptiness and the similar sounding seventh song With All My Forces ruin what would otherwise have been a pleasant if not groundbreaking album, lending it a jarring and schizophrenic quality.


The only way I'd listen to this album again is by deleting those two tracks mentioned above. The remaining seven pieces will not win any awards for innovation, but they are finely crafted and well produced.



If I've not frightened you off, then you can get the album here:

Excluding tracks 5 & 7 - 2.5 out of 5
#45