One Foot In The Grave by Philip Sayce

Philip Sayce’s Peace Machine album was featured as a staff favourite on iTunes and I loved the sound of the 30 second excerpts so wandered off to the usual haunts like Amazon to try and buy the CD, only to discover that at the time I couldn’t buy it cheap, it was commanding quite a high price everywhere I looked.  So I bought it on iTunes, and stuck my brief review on there.  But I thought I would take the opportunity to speak in a little more depth on mymp3s.co.uk because hell, I’m in charge around here.

Philip Sayce is a great guitarist.  He sounds utterly free, playing with the sort of abandon that makes him a joy to listen to.  And when he throws himself down the stairs (to paraphrase Eddie Van Halen) he lands on his feet, he doesn’t put a note wrong.  This capability gives him the stature of a really great guitarist.

Personally I’ve always felt that the controls on amplifiers are designed to be turned all the way up to ten, so if you turn them all up full you’re going to get the best sound out of an amp.  I realise this makes me sound a little Spinal Tappish.   Philip Sayce sounds like he comes from that sort of school of thought (I don’t mean he sounds like Spinal Tap, I mean in terms of cranking your amp up).  It’s not a complicated sound, it’s a loud and wild sound he produces.

So on the first track on the Peace Machine album One Foot In The Grave everything gets off to a flying start, with guitar reminiscent of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jimi Hendrix.

But it’s the guitar solo that really blows me away on this track.  It sounds like it’s just cranked right up loud to the brink of breaking up, and he plays with skilled abandon.  It’s one of my favourite solos ever, because it just shows what you can do within a relatively simple song if you know how to play.

I’ve now got a few more albums on my must-listen-to list, I’ve just got to lay my hands on them – his first album Philip Sayce Group, and Melissa Etheridge’s albums that feature his work from 2003 and 2004.