IVAN MIHALJEVIC

Croatian composer and multi-instrumentalist Ivan MIHALJEVIC is fast approaching becoming a veteran in the Croatian rock scene with almost a decade as an active musician, despite still a few years shy of reaching thirty years of age. Best known as a member of hard rock band Hard Time, but also with a solo career that people have started taking notice of. "Counterclockwise" is his third solo production, and was released towards the end of 2012 on the Zeta Factory label.

Ivan Mihaljevic & Side Effects have made themselves a fine album with "Counterclockwise". Well made, produced and performed material ranging from hard rock to metal in style, with occasional art rock flourishes and a few instances of purebred progressive rock and metal outings too. An accessible album that demands and deserves a mainstream audience interest, but with enough sophisticated details to be of interest also to fans of progressive rock and progressive metal. A CD well worth investigating, in particular by those who tend to fancy sophisticated yet accessible hard rock and metal in general.

Croatian composer and multi-instrumentalist Ivan MIHALJEVIC, still in his early 20s, has actively been pursuing a career on his local music scene since he was in his teens and is currently a member of Croatia's arguably most popular hard rock band, Hard Time. In the last few years he's also begun exploring his potential as a solo artist. "Destination Unknown" is his second solo production, and was released in the fall of 2010 by the Italian label SG Records.

"Destination Unknown" is similar to Mihaljevic's initial solo production by way of covering many stylistic bases, but in this case moving away from the realms of progressive metal and closing in on a more mainstream-oriented hard rock approach, albeit with tendencies towards frequent use of subtle details instrumentally, compositionally and in the overall arrangements. A core audience of sorts for this disc may be hard rock fans with a taste for sophisticated details in general and those who enjoy Joe Satriani just as much as Deep Purple in particular.

Ivan Mihaljevicis a young guitarist from Croatia releasing his first solo album in 2008 named Sandcastle. Quite good debute, not far from Satriani or Vai fame in manner of composing but with a clearly prog metal infusing elements here and there. Pleasent is aswell his voice on some tracks, not somthing spectacular but an ok voice for this music. His talent here is obvious, nice work, even great arrangements on some tunes like on Cascading Mirrors ,great and inventive arrnagements, smooth guitar lines and on Shimmering Karma , the rest are ok, good but not realy excellent. So a good debute by this unknown musicin who desearve a far wider recognition.3-3.5 He just released his second effort in 2010, looking forward to hear , if is as good as this one, then this young guitarist has a bright future.

An intriguing and clearly talented initial effort from this Croatian guitar virtuoso.

As a guitarist Mihaljevic belongs to what I usually refer to as the Satriani school of players: He's good at crafting strong melodic guitar solos, and saves the shredding for select occasions. As a musician and composer he's also able to cover a few more stylistic grounds than many of his colleagues - Sandcastle is pretty atypical as far as solo albums from guitarists go.

Half the songs on this disc feature vocals, and while an extended variety of styles are featured these showcase Mihaljevic's skills as a composer much more than as a guitarist: The compositions comes across as well thought out efforts rather than as foundations for showing off technical and virtous guitar skills. The latter is very much a part of the album though, but as embellishments to the composition rather than as the main feature.

A strong effort if you're intrigued by classy guitar playing and have a taste in music that spans many different genres and expressions.