Wow. To say this is a 'favorable review' is probably the understatement of the year...!
6/6 Raised Fists
Thank you Lee Chavez of Austin Sludge Machine!
http://austinsludgemachine.blogspot.com
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Album Review - "Leap of Faith", by DannyG
Austin local and musical extraordinaire Danny G set his mark yet again in the music world with his second solo album, "Leap of Faith". The album has six tracks, beautiful artwork and some of the best song writing I've heard in a while.
Where "Leap of Faith" is a definitive musical milestone in Danny's career, he has many other fantastic accomplishments as well. For the area of bass guitar, he's toured with Eric Tessmer, The Mother Truckers, and was voted the #5 best bass player in Austin in 2013. Austin. Austin, Texas. The Live Music Capitol Of The World. Austin. Freaking. Texas, ladies and gentlemen.
On top of that, he also plays guitar in his project Ocean of Stars, as well as for Shandon Sahm (son of Doug Sahm). If that isn't an impressive resume, I don't know what is.
LOF is just under 40 minutes in length (literally by ten seconds). Making it that much more unique is it being Danny's fifth entry into the RPM challenge (musician's version of NaNoWriMo)! To qualify, albums have to at least run 35 minutes in length or feature ten all original tracks. Succeed he did!
And album length personally is a big deal for me. My attention span lets me become bored of an album if it runs past 50 minutes or so. "Leap of Faith" never felt to drag on at all. Even with the song, "Krim: The Sound of Kali" being nine minutes in length exactly, there's always something new going on to keep you right at the front listening to the songs.
Riffs and melodies that you wished were longer in one song have a tendency to pleasantly come back. Those kinds of things make memorable songs, and all six tracks on this album stand out.
Despite instrumental giants like Joe Satriani, instrumental music has yet to be given the light the genre deserves. You just don't hear a lot about new instrumental music. And if there's another thing that's even rarer, it's great instrumental music. Leap of Faith is both and more.
It's prog, it's trippy, and it's even got a few moments with the doom/stoner genres. What specifically it has is up to you to decide. Though personally I found a few elements of Pink Floyd circa Meddle and The Dark Side of the Moon.
Tracks like “Symphony in D Standard” and “Brief Ties to Space” showcase the psychedelic-good-vibe-rock-guitar music of the 60’s and 70’s. ESPECIALLY the final track, “Krim: The Sound of Kali” - the drums sit this track out for a triple electric guitar piece. A nine minute guitar-epic. It’s definitely the best way to finish out the album. And “Rare Earth Metals” is probably the darkest track on the LP, and again makes it impossible to just pick one favorite.
But the shining star of the album is by far “Luna en Sombra”. If the whole album combined with Danny’s music history don’t prove to you his abilities as a multi-instrumentalist, this track will. The dual-guitar classical piece is beautiful, to say the least. Yet being quite different from the other five songs, it still has Danny’s sound in it. How do you do that?
As a guitarist, this blows my mind. A completely different genre, played a world differently, and it still sounds like DannyG. Amazing!
Since I could ramble on too much, I’ll conclude and end with this:
DannyG’s “Leap of Faith” is hands down one of the best albums I've heard in a long time. With everything it has going for it, it’s an instant classic.
I give “Leap of Faith” 6 raised fists out of 6.
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