Review Summary: It will take you somewhere far from your troubles, and relax you to the point of happiness even when everything else around you feels sad.
Buckethead is one of the weirdest guitarist I've seen, musically and on stage. This is a guy who will dress up with a KFC bucket on his head and wear a white mask giving him some sense of mystery in his work. I discovered him a couple of years ago when I was looking for experimental Rock, this is exactly what you get with this guy. You can't put him into any genre of music, because he plays a lot of different styles on his albums (mostly funk, metal, rock, experimental and ambient). 2012's Electric Sea is the sequel to 2002's Electric Tears. I recently got into Electric Tears and I directly fell in love with it, the style was exactly what I was looking for: classical rhythms and electric melodic solos.
Nothing has changed on the studio workers, but this album sounds different. I felt like there was something added that made this album better than the previous one. You still get the classical rhythms guitar and electric solo, but not only. Buckethead has managed to bring something new to the composition of his songs: diverse sounds. “Swomee Swan”, which I definitely recommend gets a very powerful electric riff while Bucketheads gives you an outstanding solo, one that takes you somewhere else far away from trouble and stress. “El Indio” gets a Western folk rhythm and an acoustic classical solo that turns into another melodic electric solo and ends in a forty seconds faster solo.
Buckethead also decided to record a full song with only a classical rhythm guitar, Beyond The Knowing that happens to be the instrumental re-release of “What Kind Of Nation” from the album Intelligence Failure, and three classical covers, one from Alfredo Catalini (“La Wally”) and two from Johann Sebastian Bach (“La Gavotte” and “Bachethead”).
On the down side, there is “Yokohama” and “Gateless Gate”.The first one sounds exactly like it was taken from Electric Tears and has nothing outstanding like the other songs while the second one is pretty useless to be honest. It consists of rhythm on classical guitar being played for about two minutes. It really feels out of place, it could stand as an intro but it actually has nothing to do with the following song, “The Homing Beacon”.
Talking about “Homing Beacon”, this is definitely a song to check out. It is a tribute to Michael Jackson (although it has nothing to do with any M.J. Songs). This one of the two songs that stands above the other (first one being “Swomee Swan”). This song actually evolves, rhythmic guitar changes and the solo guitar feels like Buckethead is saying something before ending on harmonics twenty seconds before the end of the song.
This album is definitely a good sequel to Electric Tears, ten years later. Buckethead made great improvements on the composition of his rhythmic and solo guitar and gave us another mind blowing Classical/Rock album. It will take you somewhere far from your troubles, and relax you to the point of happiness even when everything else around you feels sad.
