GUITAR NOIR

Guitar Noir is one of the better electric and symphonic albums in Steve Hackett's discography, in my opinion. The music overall has a highly symphonic progressive rock sound, but also has a very strong new-age feel with synthetic tribal percussion and droning melodies in the back of the mix. There is a lot of beautiful classical guitar playing as well as fine electric playing by one of the masters of progressive rock guitar. The soundscape found on this album are very soothing, and as I said before, quite influenced by new-age music with maybe a touch of smooth jazz. The music does occasionally come off as sounding like above-par elevator music with more interesting passages, but if you enjoy mellow music with fantastic soundscapes accentuated by terrific guitar playing, then this is definitely for you. This is the perfect mediator between Hackett's symphonic records and his classical records.