Some things work, some things don’t. Roland Bühlmann is a Swiss guitarist, who released this solo album in 2014, after playing a lot with other musicians, and apparently working on his own material for about 20 years. [acfw id=2]

The result is an instrumental album, where guitars and string instruments play the lead role (next go electric and classical guitar, Bühlmann plays bass and mandola on the album). The accompanying drums are ‘from the can’, taken from loopmasters.com – which shows all to clearly on some of the tracks.

A pity, because Roland’s guitar work is definitely not bad – he is a skilled musician, and knows how to play a good guitar solo or melody. The album contains traces of rock, on the opening track Breakthrough for example (which starts with a massive riff played on a Les Paul), but also jazz and psychedelic influences – Medlilorn for example is just a huge soundscape.

All in all, varied, but at the same time, the fact that it’s all instrumental, canned drums and loads of effects on the guitars also makes this album a long winding experience. I had a hard time hearing it out every time I played it – and quite a few times I simply switched it off well before it ended.

Musically, from technical perspective, this is definitely a good effort, but it lacks feeling and action – although guitar fans might think different.