Search - Sonny Sharrock :: Guitar

A beautiful album

09/22/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The late Sonny Sharrock was his own man on the guitar and the solo pieces he lays down here attest to his unique qualities. He can go from a mean supersonic blues to an electronic lullaby turning on a dime. If you can imagine a guy sitting on his front porch just playing, but with an array of electronic devices strapped to his axe, this is probably how it would sound. Real fine!"

..Straight Sonny...

Michael L. Bark | nyc | 12/11/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Superb stuff, Sonny is on another planet with these tunes....but it is about as undiluted as you can get with the man, and you really got to be in the mood to hear Sonny in the raw, to put on and sit through 'Guitar'. I would certainly grab 'Ask The Ages' and 'Seize the Rainbow' first, and then pick up this if you can handle the heat. WARNING!! Listen to this record ONLY in a well ventilated area...it could easily blow your crib up if contained to tightly."

Solo guitar.

Michael Stack | North Chelmsford, MA USA | 08/18/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Sonny Sharrock's "Guitar" reintroduced the guitarist to the world as a solo performer. An album of overdubbed guitar performances, the tracks on the album consist of Sharrock overdubbing guitar lines (usually a rhythm and a lead part, but sometimes as many as four lines) to build songs, covering a variety of sounds and and genres, from funky blues ("Blind Willie") to aggressive psychedelic rock ("Kula-Mae") to something totally unique in the extended suite, "Princess Sonata".



Sharrock's playing is sublime-- he was a guitarist of seemingly endless inventiveness and technique-- drawing from masters of a number of genres, but synthesizing something wholly unique out of them, his playing is at times aggressive and foreceful and at times delicate and beautiful. Having said that, I think Sharrock falters a bit without the benefit of a concrete rhythm section, there are moments of stunning power on this record, but he tends to spiral loose a bit more than I'd care for and his work with bands (in particular the stunning "Ask the Ages") I've found much more enjoyable."