Prog4you.com - Progressive Rock Review

Lindsey Boullt is a guitar player and instructor, plying his trade in San Francisco, USA. Composition is his debut album, with guest appearances and contributions from highly respected and well known fellow musicians.

Musically this album is a bit on the left side of normality. It is an instrumental album - the vocals are present on one track are vocals as an instrument and not as song as such - the guy behind it is a guitarist. Lots of soloing and/or shredding is expected; and as this is a self-released album you'll expect him to showcase his abilities from A to Z as well, with the guitar being the main instrument.

Not so in this case.

Mr. Boullt certainly showcase his abilities, but on many tracks he lets the guitar take the back seat; confident enough of his own abilities to not plaster them all over the soundscape. Same goes for shredding and riffing; good examples of them are certainly present, but used sparingly and tastefully.
What the listener do get are tracks where the guitar share the limelight with synths and violin, where carefully crafted themes are explored in a highly intriguing way. Quite a few of the tracks has a Middle East flavour to them, there's a few melodic rockers with guitar soloing here, and most of the tracks have several distinct and stylistically different themes.
As for probable influences - there are some Satriani moments here. Most of the time Boullt sounds like himself though; elements from the songs can probably said to be influenced from this or that artist; but the overall sound here has a distinct flavour that I think is very much personal.

And the tracks here are of the highest quality. Excellent musicians playing excellent songs. Opening track "Page Revisited" and the final three tracks on this album isn't quite as good as the rest in my opinion. The rest of the tracks are all killer tunes though. Satriani's "Surfing with the Alien" has become my second favorite instrumental album now, Lindsey Boullt's "Composition" has grabbed the top spot.

Overall this is a highly recommended album - in case you didn't already understand that.

Rating: 9 (out of 10)
Reviewer: Olav Björnsen

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Discography
Composition (2007)