Review Summary: Some brilliant guitar work from a guy who made it from Inner Mongolia to New York.
It makes no difference whether you are accustomed to names of people from places far away from where you come from, and most probably most of us have not heard, let alone met somebody who comes from Inner Mongolia, China. So yes, I still have a problem pronouncing the name Wulijimuren (I’m not sure I’m doing it correctly either), but after hearing his debut solo album Sun of UTC+8 (quite possible a time zone reference), I’m certain I’ll try my best to do so.
You see Wulijimuren just might become a household name for anybody who is a lover of the sound of electric guitar and anybody who truly knows their way around it. And Wulijimuren is certainly one of those guys. Being a minority anywhere in the world is hard in itself, but making it in the Western music industry just puts an additional element of pressure.
It was hard enough for this guy to make it off his regional background to Beijing music studios to do the daily grind of working on mass-produced pop hits and then landing in New York to truly showcase his guitar and (music and video) production skills. You just simply don’t land the Silver Award in the music video category at the 2016 Global Music Awards out of nothing.
Still, on Sun of UTC+8 which took Wulijimuren to make between all the other work he has done, it is his guitar skills that truly shine. He can really squeeze any sound he likes out of his instrument. Whether it is the ‘standard rock sound’ of say, Gary Moore or Steve Vai on tracks like “Rock boots of midnight at the roadside”, the Mark Knopfler ‘clean’ approach of “Train to the west” or even approaching the sound of Michael Rather on “Railways Station Ulaanbataar”.
Most of the time it is the sound the Western ears are quite familiar with, so it would be also quite easy for those ears to discern and realise the quality of Wulijimuren’s guitar work. On a number of tunes, like “Ticket To Hometown” and particularly “Vast Sky”, he introduces elements of the musical background he came from without turning them into ethnic folk. The later in particular, which includes his work on the Mongolian fiddle, truly makes his guitar playing shine.
