EARL SLICK - ZIG ZAG

Earl Slick has assembled an impressive array of talent to lend their voices to his first solo album since rejoining David Bowie’s band a few years ago. Robert Smith, Royston Langdon, Joe Elliot, Martha Davis, and even the Thin White Duke himself, take turns collaborating with Slick on Zig Zag.
Sandwiching the vocal tunes, Slick flexes his instrumental muscle to create the soundtrack for a movie that’s still waiting to be made. But, through Slick’s emotional phrasing and mature self-restraint, we can imagine every frame. The instrumental work is what Joe Satriani’s music would sound like if there were some emotion or passion behind the technique. While Satriani uses a thousand notes and puts us to sleep, Earl Slick keeps you on the edge of your seat using just a handful. Always the right note, always keeping you wanting more.
Usually mixing instrumentals and vocal tracks leaves an album feeling a little unbalanced, but Slick and producer Mark Plati have structured the disc so it all flows together into a great cohesive set. It feels like there is a conscious effort to have a beginning, middle, and end. Certain phrases or feelings are repeated in the interspersed instrumentals that make it feel like it’s all movements of the same work. It’s this kind of attention to detail that will keep you coming back to Zig Zag again and again.
READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH EARL SLICK