Holding a graduate degree in music composition from Rutgers University, and having studied with Pulitzer Prize winning composer Charles Wuorinen are not what make guitarist & composer Rob Sbar so impressive. These efforts may have honed his technical skills, but no amount of education could have given him the energy and passion that he demonstrates on Wagon Wheels and Atom Bombs, the first CD release from The Rob Sbar Noesis.
This is an exercise in musical drama. The extreme sounds of this rock-jazz fusion project are intensely cerebal, and visual beyond expectation. Sbar both gently massages, and emphatically attacks the guitar strings with the talent of guiter greats like Greg Howe and Steve Vai, creating a theatre of imagery that reveals new dynamic and sublety with each listen.
Perfectly teamed with drummer & percussionist Erik Feder, and bass guitarist Matt Schaefer, Sbar begins this sometimes chaotic, often dissonant, and always intellectual onslaught of creativity with and excerpt from the full jazz ensemble title piece "Wagon Wheels and Atom Bombs"--all eighteen seconds of it.
As you sit wondering where the music went, you are dropped into a hardcore battle of rock and jazz called "Lexical Gap" with fast and heavy guitar riffs balanced with sensual and moody jazz bass and drums.
"I Woke Up This Morning With This Human Skin On... And I Can't Seem To Get It Off", and (at almost eleven minutes) "Diet Soda, Chinese Food and a Single Yellow Daisy" contain some fast and precise guitar riffs that may leave you exhausted, but wanting more. Wrapping up this amazing showcase of all three
talented musicians, is an additional twenty-two seconds of the somewhat confusion-inducing jazz ensemble title piece.
Nine tracks of dynamic instrumental composition fill this CD with complex musical experimentation that will keep your eyes, as well as your ears, open.
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