Felix Martin - The Scenic Album (2013)

Artista: Felix Martin

Álbum: The Scenic Album
Año: 2013
Género: Heavy progresivo
Duración: 42:47
Nacionalidad: Venezuela / EEUU

Lista de Temas:
1. The Tango I
2. The Tango II
3. The Tango III
4. Spam II 04:18
5. The Triangle Tune
6. High Spirit
7. Viroliano Tries Prog
8. Viroliano Tries Jazz
9. Viroliano Tires Metal
10. Eleven Drums
11. 2 AM 05:39

Alineación:
- Felix Martin / 14 String Guitar
With:
Nathan Navarro / Bass and Chapman Stick
Marco Minnemann / Drums
Charlie Zeleny / Drums

Ahora les voy a presentar un disco, no está disponible para la descarga pero lo pueden escuchar en su espacio de bandcamp, y por supuesto, si quieren lo pueden comprar. Ya con ver la portada, se sabe qué nos va a deparar. Por un lado, Felix Martin, un guitarrista venezolano que toca con una guitarra de catorce cuerdas (creada por él mismo) y por el otro, Marco Minnemann (Necrophagist, The Aristocrats, Steven Wilson), un músico que ya no necesita presentación. Un debut sumamente auspicioso, plagado de técnicas y matices, y cuenta con su compañero bajista de la universidad de Berklee Nathan Navarro.

Felix Martin is a Venezuelan guitar player known for creating a new style of playing his self-designed 14,16-string guitars, and his versatility when composing music in several styles of music mixed with progressive metal.
Felix has toured over 17 countries throughout his career, performing with his own band and doing clinics to teach his self-invented techniques.
The debut Prosthetic studio album by genre-defying 14-string guitarist Felix Martin features Nathan Navarro on bass and Marco Minnemann (Necrophagist, The Aristocrats, Steven Wilson) on drums.

Felix Martin es conocido por la creación de un nuevo estilo de tocar sus propias guitarras, y su versatilidad a la hora de componer diferentes estilos de música. El disco "The Scenic Album" fusiona elementos del metal progresivo, jazz, musica folklorica y fusión.

If progressive metal has a bad reputation, Felix Martin isn’t aware of it-- and something tells me he isn’t particularly irked. The Venezuelan guitarist makes one of the most overwrought genres sound natural and digestible as ever, and through nothing more than ambitious-- but logical-- songwriting.
The Scenic Album is dense and comprehensive, harboring the breed of power that guitarists like Tosin Abasi and Chris Letchford have been swiping at for quite some now. Not to say Felix Martin has outperformed his peers-- his style is more an amalgam of his favorites, and is lacking its own definitive edge-- but for the man’s debut release, The Scenic Album is quite the accomplishment. A glance at the album’s tracklist reveals Martin’s stylistic ambition; the three-part series of “Viroliano Tries Prog,” “Viroliano Tries Jazz” and “Viroliano Tries Metal” says enough on that front. To be fair, though, those song titles give the wrong impression of The Scenic Album. While it is chock-full of different genres, they function as cards he plays throughout the album’s runtime, not bells and whistles he throws in for novelty’s sake. While “Viroliano Tries Metal” is as brutish as expected, the track still blends in with The Scenic Album’s overall aesthetic, camouflaging itself amongst the other behemoths on this record. “High Spirit” begins by exploring progressive metal in a way Animals As Leaders once did, and “Triangle Tune” is both complex and affecting-- it wouldn’t even surprise me if, in an alternate universe, the track were placed on a more caffeine-laced copy of the latest Scale the Summit record. The song conveys emotional substance in such an instrumentally industrious way, toying with dynamics and distinct styles from one moment to the next. But these parts of The Scenic Album overshadow the rest, for they illustrate a picture of Felix Martin himself, not the aggregate parts of his biggest influences.
I can’t say the same for the rest of the record; The Scenic Album is awe-inspiring, but not particularly innovative. Of course, this isn’t much of an issue-- all music is inspired by the music before it, and so forth-- but I do look forward to when Felix Martin finds a more distinctive voice to present in the future. The record is already promising on so many fronts, namely that it’s musically mountainous without being overbearing. This is the case because it’s Martin, doing what he loves and with the help of his friends. If he’d thought up a pretentious band name and chosen an off-the-mark art style for this record, well, I wouldn’t have been surprised. It simply would have created a more amusing release than a memorable one. But because the album cover is nothing more than Felix with his custom 14-string guitar, and because the contained music is nothing more than a collection of songs that aesthetically speak for themselves, I can’t help but be fascinated with The Scenic Album. It’s entertaining, sleek and unique, but more importantly, it’s an immensely solid record from a man who’s bound to blow up the prog-metal scene someday soon.

Jacob R.

You may not have heard of Felix Martin, but you've clicked through the cover art to get here. You're probably starting to get the idea. Basically, the Venezuelan designed a double-necked, fourteen-string guitar which could fit onto a single body, and now he's playing it. As a Berklee graduate, his chops aren't bad and neither are his connections. On the attractively titled "The Scenic Album," he's joined by two other virtuosos; the first is Marco Minnemann, former Necrophagist and Steven Wilson sticksman and one of the most technically accomplished drummers in metal. Equally impressive, though less experienced, is bassist Nathan Navarro, who's using his YouTube account to wrench full-blooded, wobs-and-all dubstep out of a modified four-string. There is every chance that each of these three will be leading their discipline in the next few years. The album is so immaculately put together that it makes you wonder whether it's been executed by robots. Martin's two-handed tapping is harmonically, rhythmically and melodically versatile and notes go by in a flurry of interesting combinations. Opening suite "The Tango" is a modal shindig with carnival flair and plenty of room for soloing, where every subdivision of the beat is covered by one of the trio. Despite being a markedly heavy track, "Viroliano Tries Metal" is a little easier on the ear because there are audible spaces between notes. "Spam II" is arguably the strangest of the bunch, with double kick, dissonant Phrygian riffing and hardly any distortion to complete the package. Martin deserves credit for covering so much ground on a debut album, from soft rock to metal and through several permutations of prog. Sadly, many of these experiments are the superficial interpretations of genre that weaker virtuoso players indulge in. "Viroliano Tries Jazz," too, but all that entails is 60 seconds of swing rhythms, thrown into the normal mix of distortion and scale runs. He can resemble metal, jazz or prog but can't embody them just yet. // 6
Martin does well to avoid vocals, particularly on the metal tracks. All too many "shred" guitarists miss the point of being a soloist by letting somebody else sing over their work, but this album strikes the right balance between the man and the ensemble. // 7
This album is stimulating in senses theoretical, technical and (to an extent) musical, but the greatest thrill you get is from knowing that people have put such a complex piece together from scratch. Sadly, that excitement is curbed by the fact that you can't see it happening; you want to understand the slap and pop on "The Tango" and how "Triangle Tune" is held together when it feels like it's about to go off the rails. When you're unsighted there's only so much to learn. "The Scenic Album" is as much science as art, and life is too short to be spending all your time in the lab

UG Team

Among passionate music fans there is a real desire to hear the sonic unknown, to find until now unheard of amalgamations of styles and sounds. For me, Felix Martin encompasses that thrilling aspect of musical discovery, and in particular the mixing of a widening divergence of styles with metal. His forward-thinking approach to combining jazz and metal into legitimate jazz-metal impressed me from the first time I heard his 2010 debut, Bizarre Rejection, which I bought on Itunes but is no longer available there.
Since that time he was signed by Prosthetic Records and released a live album that contained four songs from his debut and a few new originals that showed even further depth in his crazy eight-finger tapping and the use of a unique 14-string guitar that allows him to play things no one else can. Now in 2013, a new Felix Martin release has dawned, this time entitled The Scenic Album.
The Scenic Album reveals continued evolution and growth in Felix Martin’s songwriting while also featuring three tracks from his previous live album. It starts out strong with the three-song “Tango” suite, which, as the title suggests, integrates Felix’s love for Latin rhythms and world music into his signature style of tapping. Where these songs diverge from those genres is in some oddly phrased metal riffs and Felix’s use of his instrument to create hybrid slap/pop-fueled rhythms and to intersperse soft yet powerful excursions into playful jazz. His sparingly used introduction of Meshuggah-inspired rhythms into his music also adds a new dimension not found on previous efforts.
After the strong three-song opener, the album moves on to “Spam II”, a delightful second chapter to what began with the first “Spam” way back on his debut album Bizarre Rejection. Like Part One, the song is a shifting blur of styles and emotions spliced up and regurgitated into one mass, much like the process used to create Spam by stripping and re-combining elements into an unholy singular whole. After the excellent “Spam II”, we get another exquisitely beautiful showcase of his tapping skills in the one-two punch of “Triangle Tune” and “High Spirit”. The rest of the album continues to expand and explore more diverse combinations of jazz and metal with a Latin flair, and never disappoints or bores.
The Scenic Album sees Felix Martin once again fuse jaw-dropping technicality with a fluid sense of grace and feeling. He has outclassed the majority of instrumental guitarists who are simply incapable of delivering this kind of multifaceted experience. There is a soulfulness to Felix Martin’s playing and a wise desire to frequently shift from the complex to the simple, and to do so in a meaningful way that never feels contrived.
Beyond his powerhouse playing, he has also wisely chosen two incredibly talented people to back him up on The Scenic Album, and their contributions take the album to even greater heights. Joining him is Nathan Navarro, a phenomenal bassist who furiously funks up this album and is audible at just about every point. His playing here, in tone and style, reminds me of Trevor Dunn, specifically on the first Mr. Bungle record, though occasionally the slap/popping you hear is Felix Martin (I noticed that when watching a playthrough of “Tango”, but that’s a rarity as far as I know.)
Rounding out the trio is the ever-eclectic Marco Minnemann, a drummer who is just as comfortable in a world music group or rock band as he is playing live for Necrophagist or doing studio work for Ephel Duath. While at times his playing feels more subdued as he follows Felix, he often branches out into a complicated flurry of beats delivered with a groovy precision most metal drummers simply don’t have.
With The Scenic Album, Felix Martin expands his own self-created hybrid of jazz-metal and does so in a way that is often stunningly beautiful. He expertly crafts complex yet catchy songs that resonate with a sincere emotional core that keeps your attention. With this release he has made clear his continued desired to blur and knock down sonic boundaries with ease, and he has a bright future ahead of him.

Austin Weber

Técnicamente, esto es súper impresionante, aunque musicalmente su estructura no es muy coherentemente, es un poco un cosas mezcladas de mostrar y tratar de mostrarse como un animal al frente de su guitarra, pero no hay mucha cohesión a sus canciones, ojo, con ideas buenas, pero quizás escuchando el conjunto de canciones es donde no se puede percibir la obra como un todo. La guitarra es sin duda una locura y el tipo es una bestia, y hay momentos en los que las canciones son fantásticas, pero las transiciones son pobres y el disco en sí parece un conjunto que se copió y pegó para formar un grupo de canciones.
Él es un músico brillante sin embargo, su forma de tocar es increíble y este es sólo su primer álbum, así que estoy seguro de que va a encontrar su propio estilo y va a depurar su capacidad creativa en las composiciones, esperemos que no se pierda en la maraña de tantas cuerdas.
Bueno, lo presentamos en nuestro blog, como para que vayan conociendo al músico y a su obra, veremos que es lo que nos trae este señor en el futuro.