Lindsey Boullt: Composition

San Francisco area guitarist and educator Lindsey Boullt has assembled an interesting support lineup on Composition that radiates an Indo-progressive rock musical plane. Former Santana percussionist Mingo Lewis and Mahavishnu Orchestra violinist Jerry Goodman assist with the ensemble's keen enactment of world music and power-lined progressive rock.

Boullt's loud, chunka-chunka chord voicings and super-speed single note heroics nicely contrast sitarist Peter Van Gelder and vocalist Sukhawat Ali Khan's East Indian permutations on select tracks. And with Goodman's streaming violin passages, the band often boasts a rocketing attack amid an expansive, wall-of-sound backdrop.

On "Call for Peace, the weighty Eastern modalities and rhythmic element are dappled with tricky time signatures and Khan's echo-chamber like, East Indian chants. Yet Boullt's divergent mix also features bombastic, 1970s style rock motifs amid the appealing ballad "Farewell, where he carves out the primary melody via sustain-drenched single note lines. In other areas, the guitarist sparks a feeding frenzy mode of execution, shaded with distortion/delay techniques to complement a few torrid exchanges with Goodman and keyboardist Derek Sherinian.

Ultimately, Boullt keeps it short and sweet by getting his point across in concise fashion, sans your typical prog-rock type wanking. Within the body of the program, he zooms in on the compositional aspects in lieu of cranking out one guitar-driven gymnastic after another. Boullt can, however, hold his own with many of the present day guitar gods. Then again, it's about the art of good taste, swathed into a potpourri of articulately-crafted dynamics that engender the Midas touch here.