the best virtuosic guitar album of all time

back in the day, i played a lot of guitar solos. i mean a lot, and i listened to a lot of music by people like jimi hendrix, duane allman, john mclaughlin, wes montgomery and all kinds of people who could just play their asses off. like vernon reid. and every once in a while i get nostalgia for blazing and unself-consciously gratuitous riffery. if you're like me, you should check out 'temporal analogues of paradise.' it's usually filed in jazz under jonas hellborg's name (who's the bassist) but the stars of the show are really shawn lane on guitar and jeff sipe aka apt q258 on drums. this was a power trio built to do one thing, and that thing is tear the ever-living stuffing out of modal improvisation. to the best of my knowledge, lane hasn't really ever done anything else worth listening to (although two other discs with hellborg ('time is the enemy' and 'abstract logic') are worth getting if you find out you like this one), but this one is the sine qua non of rock-jazz wankery. in much the same way that outkast is worth listening to even if you don't like hip-hop because they transcend it, this group managed to make an incredible live album which surpasses mere technique in the search for something higher. lane doesn't play guitar like malmsteen or other wankers: his approach is more akin coltrane's "sheets of sound" approach where he's playing so many notes so close together that it becomes something between a note and a chord and shifts the whole tonality of the song around. all that, plus, he fills in a lot of texture when sipe or hellborg are going at it (yeah, unfortunately there are bass solos, but what are you going to do). most albums like this evoke nothing. they're just displays of technique, but with only two tracks, each clocking in at 25+ minutes, the trio meanders through so many different sonic realms that you really get to feel like you're going someplace. the beginning of the second movement in particular always makes me think of the hazy summer afternoons of my youth in massachusetts. anyways, i have to get back to things like hot tickets, but if you appreciate master plying their craft, you gotta check this disc out. not available on itunes, i don't think, but i ordered it from amazon here:

temporal analogues of paradise