Buckethead: the questionably-sane acoustic savant. Legend has it, he hasn’t spoken a word for 20 years, but apparently he has a lot to say, as he easily puts out 4 to 5 albums per year, and is now approaching a 125-album legacy. He was guitarist for Guns N’ Roses once. At concerts he dances the robot, shows off his nunchaku skill, and trades garbage bag amounts of toys with his fans.
Shadows Between the Sky is so good. My heart skipped listening to “Sled Ride”, and a little piece melted clean off during “Sunken Statue”. Shadows Between the Sky is a work of ambience and slow emotion. The quality of recording and mastering is superb, with all the detail of a cymbal tap or plectrum pluck preserved in impressive clarity.
The title track is probably the most recognizable of any track on the album. I don’t know exactly what technique he uses on the guitar when the song picks up, but it’s distinctive Buckethead and sounds really cool.
“Sled Ride” and “Wax Paper” are the quickest tempo tracks on the album, while “Walk on the Moon” sounds much like a track off Acoustic Shards, or Electric Tears.
This album is notably clean. If he has a distortion or gain knob on his amp, he definitely didn’t touch it. There are never more than three instruments playing at once, but adding any more layers would seem to only muddy up the track.
One more thing about this album is that it flows really well. Even though all the tracks end in silence, and they don’t intentionally merge into one another, if you’re not paying attention, it really feels like the music is just going on and on.
Ultimately, this album deserves its spot among the list of Essential Buckethead, along with Electric Tears, Enter the Chicken, Decoding the Tomb of Bansheebot, and Colma. I can’t wait to see what he’s got in store for us next in 2010.
To purchase Buckethead’s music straight from friend Travis Dickerson’s label, go to TDRSMusic.com.