NATURAL CAUSES

Continuing Eastern elements in calm, guitar + percussion based music, Steve Tibbets presents another album in his line of work. I'm not sure about older entries in his discography, because I haven't heard them, but I know something else. This, even it's pleasant music intended for relaxation purposes, is not Prog. It's one of these albums that gets here and won't score so highly, because they're not meant to.

3(-), there's not much to rate. Calm, calm and again calm music, no major twists at all, slow pace, acoustic beauty. That's all. So if you want Prog, look elsewhere, because this album is for different audience.

Like the earlier "Northern Songs" album, this 2010 "Natural Causes" project, is quiet underrated, by the few that have rated this "small wonder". I suspect that the Jazz/Fusion followers, don't feel the "dynamics" so close to the style, maybe, I suppose.

Anyway, if you are an acoustic guitar player or audiophile, or both, Steve Tibbetts, is someone you should be aware of. His style as such, is really not Jazz nor Fusion, as I have mentioned, it is closer to the "New Age" or "Ambient" taggings, which of course has a lot of good as bad exponents. Tibbetts's "Natural Causes" , is close to the best those kind of music genres generated and all he offered back in return to the same.

So to pin-point somehow his sound, I who dislike unnecessary comparissons, would try to make you think of an example. Imagine the John McLaughlin (Shakti) kind of ensemble (less the violin), with a far better sense of music-composition and less flash, with a bit of the very naked-like sound of "Oregon", wrapped in the "spiritual/ambiental" approach of Steve Roach's music, compressed in perfectly written songs, that turn out to be each one as good as the other. In a flawless "instrumental" effort, closer I insist, to the ambiental environments, which of course, I would hardly consider "Jazz/Rock or Fusion" as such.

Therefore, it does not hold any of the "protocols" or "pirouettes" of the Jazz/Rock/Fusion genre. Its "fusion" value, consist mainly in the very moderate use of native "mid-western" instruments, but mainly as parts of acoustic guitar compositions, perfectly and original acoustic guitar songs performed by an unpretentious virtuoso, that also knows how to write excellent close to masterful pieces.

****4.5 PA stars . And yes,I insist, this could hardly be tagged Jazz or Rock, although it is all Prog!