Classic Rock Bottom

I wrote this review for the Rock Is Life.com website back in 2005.

 

Steve Howe

Spectrum

Inside Out Music - 2005

http://www.stevehowe.com

 

What's The 4-1-1?

The Yes guitarist releases his latest solo CD and incorporates a wide variety of musical styles giving true meaning to the title of the album.

 

Genre

Classic Rock / Instrumental

 

The Good

Well if you were looking for one album that could bring a wide assortment of musical influences and styles to you in a nice tidy package, I'd venture to say this would be the one. The promo materials describe the album as having a light summer time feel to the songs. Its a pretty apt description considering what Howe was trying to accomplish here. He brings his own decades of experience with a classic rock sound and mixes in Latin grooves, blues music, some classical guitar, sitar music, Asian sounds and even some country tones as well.

The result is a very good album that features the country tinged rocker "Ebb and Flow", the bouncy "Ultra Definition" and the blues dripping "Fools Gold". "Labyrinth" mixes the classical guitar with rock guitar and comes out great. My favorite two songs were the lead song "Tiger's Den" which is a fantastic rock cut and the song "Where Words Fail" which comes across as the most ballad-like composition, yet still has that required rock feel to it.

 

The Bad

The only real problem I had with this album was the Latin music inspired "Band of Light". It just came across as a bit too drawn out for my taste.

 

The Verdict

I'm a big fan of vocals, so if I'm going to like an all-instrumental CD it has got to be something special. The album has some great material featured on it. The material is focused on the songs themselves rather than simply being a showcase for Howe's guitar playing, which is a problem for a lot of instrumentalists out there in the music market place. Spectrum is the first instrumental album I've truly enjoyed since Joe Satriani's 2004 release Is There Love In Space? You should definitely make plans to add this one to your collection.

 

Did You Know?

Besides playing in Yes, Steve Howe has released albums with GTR and Asia, and may other solo recordings as well.

 

Rating: 4 out of 5

 

 

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(11/30/1945-9/7/2010)

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