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Starting from the second half of the 80s, a musical phenomenon commonly known as "shredding" was born, whose protagonists were mainly very young, technical, and determined guitarists, especially in wanting to follow in the footsteps of the Swedish axeman Yngwie Malmsteen.
The director of this movement, as well as the discoverer of many promising instrumentalists, was none other than Mike Varney, who, unable to retain in his "stable" a Malmsteen who had already embarked on a brilliant career with Alcatrazz, gave these young people the opportunity to have recording contracts under his supervision. Assuming that a good number of these guitarists were merely technical phenomena, lacking strong personality and ideas, and leaving aside, at least for now, the degenerative aspect of this musical phenomenon that still today has produced characters like M. Angelo or Rusty Cooley (perhaps the most deleterious and degrading expression), it must be emphasized how it is not always correct to give "a priori synthetic judgments" of a peremptory nature, unless your name is Emmanuel Kant!
In fact, it was precisely in the second half of the 80s and under the guidance of Mike Varney that a true talent and a guitarist with truly impressive technical-compositional skills emerged like a comet among all others, proving over the next 20 years to be able to brilliantly tackle very different musical paths, moving from neoclassical to fusion, to certain typically bluesy sounds and intertwining important collaborations with figures like Alice Cooper, culminating in the recent entry into the glorious UFO in place of one Michael Schenker. I am, of course, talking about Vinnie Moore and, in this review, I want to emphasize the merits of what I consider to be his true masterpiece, which has now become a "classic" in the neoclassical field and, in all likelihood, the only genuine alternative to Y. J. Malmsteen's grand "Rising Force": "Time Odyssey."
On the surface, there are many similarities with the Swedish virtuoso: a classical approach to the instrument, with clear influences from Bach, Vivaldi, and Paganini, a devastating technique, with alternations of sweep, diminished, alternate picking executed with precision and speed by a true master and, for the more mischievous, a title that brings to mind a work of Yngwie that, purely by chance (who knows), came out in the same year, 1988. But, aside from these tidbits (the latter almost gossip), in reality "Time Odyssey" is absolutely different from all of the Swedish production: it is an album that highlights Vinnie's personality and artistic talent, his deep love for classical music and the pursuit of always very complex but never cloying, repetitive compositions, where ample space is given, alongside the admirable virtuosity of "Morning Star" or "Message In A Dream", to seductive melodies and reflections of a mature and contemplative guitar, as in George Harrison's cover "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", in the arrangement of the piece by J.S. Bach "April Sky" ("Air on a G string" and "piano concerto No. 5" second movement) and, especially, in the powerful "As Time Slips By", which for inspiration, feeling, and creative capacity, touches the most noble and high peaks of this instrument and stands as the absolute pinnacle of a truly majestic work.
This is an album for connoisseurs and refined palates, but anyone who loves the electric guitar and is not biased can hardly fail to admire its qualities, and it might be worth quoting Jimi Hendrix for "Time Odyssey":
"Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens"
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