TECHNICAL MUSIC REVIEW
Progressive Instrumentalist Graham Young has recently released a full length album “A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man”. Why is he a unique instrumentalist? Young isn’t a shredder…..he plays fast sometimes as a guitarist, but seeks for lots of melodic guitar leads and emotion. It shows throughout his latest release with flying colors. Why shouldn’t he be bundled with the millions of guitarists that write instrumentals? Graham is very keen to writing songs, and not shred-a-thons. What I mean by that translated to English is he has heart and soul. He looks at his songs and music as a whole…..lots of heavily layered tracks and lots of effort was put into writing this album.
Young’s music is very experimental, moody, slightly heavy….and also a genre crosser that appeals to a wide range of fans younger and older. He has really cool and flashy moments that bring back memories for you instrumental fusion proggers of the late Allan Holdsworth and John McLaughlin as well. He has added lots of keyboard and synthesizer parts throughout his album, as well. His layered clean tracks are heavily rooted in reverb, delay, chorus, flange and various effects that add huge psychedelic hints too reminiscent of the 1970’s music scene. I think I even heard some electronic xylophone at one point!
Young’s music has impressed me on many levels as a fellow guitarist and writer. His music is a big reason why TMR exists and strives to promote artsy music whether its very technical or very underground or independent. A lot of these great artists need the help, exposure and respect of fellow artists and music lovers out there.
You can purchase his latest album digitally and physically at his bandcamp, among his other releases as well. Help keep your favorite artists around, we don’t do this stuff for free ya know.
https://grahamyoung1.bandcamp.com/music
Originally published on Technical Music Review. Republished with permission.
