A Viewpoint

The virtuoso super-guitarist is back with a head-banger that mixes both his unique brand of delicious guitar music with a rollicking groove that’s destined to stay in your head for a long, long time. This is grandiose guitar music by a grandiose guitar legend who’s got nothing more to prove to the world anymore. Nineteen Eighty is simply Satch doing what he does best—surfing with music that’s alien in imagination yet talks to you and moves you on your innermost core. Though I have to say that I wasn’t really as euphoric about it on my very first listen, cause how unusually different it first felt from the regular batch of ‘first songs’ that we've heard from Satch’s previous albums—from ‘Shockwave Supernova’ to ‘Energy’. And compared to those, this track felt a little ‘empty’ to me, mainly cause I was eagerly waiting for a scorching guitar solo that’d take me to the upper atmosphere and...that just never arrived. So as you can see, this track actually tip-toes aroun...

One of the biggest obstacles for all act of creation is boundary, whether it’s self imposed by an artist or any other form of technical limitations regarding their craftsmanship. But sometimes, an artist’s own individual sensibilities can turn into their creative boundaries, such as being confined to only a particular style of expression that the artist is recognizable for. Like being limited to one’s own brand of artistry. It’s kind of like a paradox—every artist, in any field, has their own signature ways of expression, which in turn, makes them limited in not-so-subtle ways. To put it simply, what defines them, what makes them unique and endearing, turns into their own creative boundaries in the long run. That’s why it’s so important for artists to try to reinvent themselves or taking their brand of creativity to places where they’ve never been. Otherwise in the long run, their work starts to get stale and predictable. And when the said artist is Joe Satri...