Greg Howe seems like he’s always been waiting in the wings to be
\nthe next guitar god. He’s slugged it out for over a decade,
\nreleasing album after album of guitar-oriented music, but for some
\nreason or another, he’s never made it to the levels of someone like
\nJoe Satriani. (I’d be remiss if I even pretended to know everything
\nabout Howe’s career; I haven’t followed him that closely over the
\nyears.)<\/p>\n
But his 1999 release
\nAscend<\/i> seems to feature Howe just playing for the sake of
\nplaying with other virtuosos — and in that release, he has found
\nthe freedom to make the kind of album that should get other people
\nto stand up and take notice. That is, if people even bother to give
\nhim a chance — and I’m afraid many people aren’t willing to make
\nthat big of a leap of faith.<\/p>\n
Howe handles all guitar and bass work on this disc (except for
\nthe closing track “Full Throttle,” which also features guitarist
\nPrashant Aswani), and even tackles the guitar synthesizer to
\nprovide all instrumentation on “Her Dance”. Rounding out the band
\nare keyboardist Vitalij Kuprig (whose debut album featured Howe’s
\nguitar work and inspired him to do this album) and drummer Jon
\nDoman, two musicians who are more than capable of keeping up with
\nthe technical wizardry that Howe possesses.<\/p>\n
Musically, it does take some time for things to really get
\nwarmed up on
\nAscend<\/i>. The opening tracks, “Unlocked” and “Tales Told,” are
\ndecent enough efforts, but they don’t have the magic that would
\nnormally lock me into a disc like this. Instead, that magic peeks
\nits head out on “Garden Of Harmony” — and from then on, it’s all
\nclear sailing for Howe.<\/p>\n
Especially worthy of praise is his accurate cover of Rush’s “La
\nVilla Strangiato,” a track which gives all three members of the
\nband plenty of room to shine (especially when it comes to hearing
\nHowe’s bass work, eerily reminiscent of Geddy Lee). And though I
\nwish the track had been longer, “Her Dance” is absolute
\nwizardry.<\/p>\n
Howe proves on
\nAscend<\/i> that he deserves the chance to run with the big dogs
\n— but even if he never gets that opportunity, he can easily look
\nback on this album and proudly consider it a killer effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25356,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6298],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-36562","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-greg-howe","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36562"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36562"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}