Jean-Francois Mathieu Inguitarissable

The monumentally eclectic range of styles and guitar sounds collected together to form Inguitarissable certainly illustrates that Mathieu is a good guitarist and is a more than capable composer. But the mere number of midi patches employed in any single piece make this a difficult album to classify, is it folky avante-gardism or progressive metal? And the frequent changes also make it not a particularly easy listening experience either. However, it is fun and the humour is self evident, from the many-fingered caricature on the front cover to the scatological arrangements of the harmonic layers within, even panpipes and whistling feature, but not at the same time.

Drawing widely from a panopoly of playing styles, you can play "Spot The Guitarist"; "that's Howe", "now Zappa", "er, oh! whathisface? Vai! that's it", "definitely DiMeola", "way West man", "soooo Oldfield", and there's soooo many that you'll probably always be right! Mathieu's wilder playing sometimes smacks of metallic muscle flexing and might be any shredder doing their workout, whereas his own voice is most readily heard on the less schizophrenic, less frenetic acoustic pieces, which tend to be strong compositions influenced by Spain and eastern Europe. Buy it, but buckle up beforehand.