Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet
Dim the Lights, Chill the Ham

Gets your ass shaking and your jacket collar up, Dim The Lights, Chill The Ham, the long-awaited debut from the versatile, gutsy, phenomenal guitarist Brian Connelly leading the great Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet.

Twang of Duane Eddy in one hand and the entire encyclopedia of guitar techniques in the other, the Canadian instrumental trio perks up the lucky listener, surfing them along the strings of a frenzied Gibson, handing them a pair of flower-patterned fifties-style bermuda shorts, and tossing them into the Pacific Ocean waves.

It's summer, guys, this album needs to stay permanently in the player, it's a navigator with coordinates locked on seaside cities, you can't steer anywhere else to the sound of "Reid's Situation", the reverbs of "Vince Lombardi School" or "Who Painted Whistler's Mother" (a masterpiece of building climax between whistles and the fabulous Don Pyle's drumming that leads to an overflowing detonation by the leader with his melancholic vibrato).

I write these words dancing to the stimuli Connelly sticks up my navel; I skip dinner, start the car, and head to Spain or Portugal or...just gotta go...you can't resist a vigorous and passionate sound like this...it makes you want to escape!

When the sun goes down, we can have a drink by the seaside, lying on the Hawaiian notes of "Siesta Cinema", the cocktail-lounge sound of the title track or the Latin-flavored "Hot Box Car", throwing red roses to passing skirts to the rhythm of "In My Room" feeling like Mexican gunslingers thanks to "Misogomy & The Object".

Then rushing back to the hotel, loads of pomade in our hair and off to unleash ourselves at the disco, tonight our trusted DJ is in the mood for revival, and we wink and give a thumbs-up in approval when the possessed Connelly with the ass-kicking organ of "Running Meredith" (yet another breathtaking masterpiece) comes through, rising up our nervous system, driven by Reid Diamond's acrobatic bass, shaking us into an enthralling epileptic dance, with the breathtaking run of "Aunts Invasion" and the hilarious "I Knew A Guy Named Larry" tossing us up and down into an inevitable total loss of self-control and then leaving us exhausted.

Reverb, twang, tremolo, vibrato, echo, fuzz-tone, distortion... Reid doesn't leave behind any of the effects and techniques that have made the symbolic instrument of the past century great, supported by an inspired, olympic-form rhythm section that doesn’t fall into the easy trap of just being a sidekick.

These three jovial masters of instrumental music have brains buzzing with ideas and use them to pay homage to the greatest guitarists from the surf-music years (and beyond), soon becoming their prime disciples.

Irresistible!