Bruno Pitch - "Crystal Garden" Review

Artist/ Band: Bruno Pitch
Title: Crystal Garden
Label: Self release
Year of Release: 2010
Offical Artist/ Band Link

The Review:

Bruno Pitch, a Chapman Stick player hailing from Moulins, France is joined by, Guix Huré (drums, percussion) together these two musicians compliment each other perfectly, regardless of style. In June 2010, under his own name, Bruno Pitch released his instrumental debut album entitled, Crystal Garden. The album primarily consists of progressive rock based sounds along with some jazz-fusion and even world music.

There are 8 songs on Crystal Garden, ranging in lengths from about 4 to 10 minutes. The music never strays from the concise arrangements and Bruno handles Chapman Stick more like a guitar than other musicians like Tony Levin, Don Schiff or Rob Martino, who seems to handle it from a bass players point of view.

The highlights of the album are “Karachi” (7:54) has a world music vibe, primarily Oriental based. Then we have the title track, “Crystal Garden” (5:58) which combines a straight-forward rock sound with some jazz-fusion moments. Finally, the closing epic track “Liquid Garden” (10:02), which is an experimental sounding almost improvisational piece that recalls King Crimson from various moments in their career but mostly the 80s era.

In closing, if you’re a Chapman Stick fan then this is a no-brainer purchase. Also if you enjoy energetic instrumental music with some layers to the music that reveals itself on each listen. Normally I’m not an instrumental music fan but after listening to Crystal Garden, I look truly forward to hearing more in the future from Bruno Pitch. I feel he will be spoken about alongside the musicians who have chosen the Chapman Stick as their instrument of choice. So I leave you with two important words, highly recommended. Don’t take my word for it, you can check out Bruno’s MySpace page for samples.

Reviewed by Ron Fuchs on March 19th, 2011

Tracks:

01. Solarium

02. Dual Sphere

03. Friendships

04. Le Chateau

05. Karachi

06. Crystal Garden

07. Neverlove

08. Liquid Garden