Blackstratblues - Nights In Shining Karma

Warren Mendonsa aka Blackstratblues Debut album - Nights In Shining Karma, is no doubt the best instrumental album i ever heard till date. The Songs are just plain rad with great, unmatched songwriting. Packs great sense of melody with every song, beautiful phrasing, rich layering and magical & energizing feel. I wont credit everything to warren when all the percussion & recording, mixing, production, etc are done by his younger brother Zorran, a good sound engineer. Very lucky people as they're that they released album w/o undergoing much of expenses. And a well thought of way start of by direct download and transfer of money through paypal or in person which is a good choice as with the technology, many-a-people ignore buying the stuff.

1. Incense - A slow piece with a breezy feel to it ..a nice song to start with.
2. Soar The Sky - I would say this is The best song from the album with superb and unusual sense of melody backed by fantastic choppy riffs. A totally blissful feel turning into a rad energizing feel from the midway. A song to watch out for.
3. Anuva's Sky - I am pretty sure everyone knows what this song revolves around. a catchy lullaby intro and whats ahead is are some pretty neat phrasing on the same lines. the songwriting is pretty neat too ..basically just repeating with some additional phrasing with a nice emotional touch to it. it doesn't look so obvious thanks to all the rich layering in the song.
4. Gary For Blues - A nice slow bluesy song along the lines of gary moore. which is what i believe he dedicated this song to. again ..fantastic phrasing on simple lines to digging the depths outro.
5. With You (And nothing else to do) - I don't know how to describe this song ..sounds pretty much a slow song out of boredom or emptyness on a starry midnight.
6. Cats and the Fiddle - A catchy fun song along the lines of his earlier song "Quackor the Metal ducky" ..which i believe was after the ducky of mandark from Dexter's laboratory. Both these songs sound like cartoon themes.
7. Nights In Shining Karma - One of Fav from the album. A nice track to listen to on a cloudy evening ..alone at home. the keyboard bits give a nice feel to an otherwise okay/good song.
8. Bombay Rain - This is a neat song. Although i don't know what Warren had in his mind while naming this song. the only rain factor about it was were those slide bits.. However, a superb ending. a very unusual leads by the end.

Well ..that's that! The album was released about 2 months back. and can be downloaded from -
www.blackstratblues.com

other resources are -
Soundclick
My Space

Enjoy!