Originally from Visakhapatnam, India, the now Texas based Krishna Peri is a guitarist of some experience having spent over six years playing with cover bands of various hues. Now going solo in order to put the many ideas he had percolating onto tape. He assembled a few musicians to help him… namely Marcus Shammah on bass, Noble John (sic) on drums, Joy Soloman on keys with Krishna himself looking after lead and rhythm guitars. Together they have produced an EP of guitar led, instrumental rock.
Named after a kind of particle accelerator, Cyclotron is apparently a story about a scientist who finds himself on the planet Nabiru after an experiment went wrong! Comprising five tracks, the EP kicks off with ‘Escape Velocity’ and it’s after the inevitable radio transmission, a Satriani style piece with the guitar producing a nice melody over the backing. There are hammers, runs and bends aplenty as well as some neat overdubs to give the guitar harmonies. ‘Critical Mass’ is more of the same but, after the rapid fire opening, the melody is stronger and is closer to ‘speaking’. ‘Silver Linings’ slows the pace for a ballad without words and it works too. ‘Third From The Sun’ lasts less than two minutes and doesn’t, as I feared, try to copy Hendrix’ tune about our little planet. A nice enough interlude. The title track, ‘Cyclotron’ wraps it up with the best of the lot… it is a catchy and structured piece of classic rock and the guitar does the job of vocals and soling very well.
So, if you like instrumental, guitar based rock, this is as good as many and better than some… nothing remarkably new, just solid playing, soloing and a definite lyricism to the guitar phrasing.
