PIKE 101 - IN THE HOLLOW HILLS

BUCKETHEAD - PIKE 101 - In The Hollow Hills 60th album out of 60 in 2014 and 130th overall All sounds brought to you by Buckethead and all instrumental This one clocks in at 29:01 and has four tracks

"In The Hollow Hills" (7:51) begins with a slow tempo and clean guitar riff with a slight echoey Floydian guitar tone. The bass and drums are equally chilled and a background atmospheric synth resonates. It has a very slight spaghetti Western feel to the whole thing but in a spacey type of way. Or maybe i be trippin'. It never really develops into anything and stays calm and spacey. The melody is the looped variety and well, i'm just not enthralled by this one

"Ghost Of Broken Eggs" (13:23) begins with a bendy note type of blues guitar and then a second guitar lick delivers some higher register blues. It's one of those cool cat numbers with the bass delivering a never-ending recurring four note to five note loop and the guitar simply performs predictable blues runs that sound more like B.B. King or other classic old school blues cats from the past than BH. This is all fine and dandy but nothing really too exciting and more than wears out its welcome clocking in over the thirteen minute mark. Nice background music though. Would be perfect for a movie soundtrack as well

"Bumper Cars" (1:29) picks up the steam and delivers a grungy alternative rock riff that gets even more feisty as it becomes more funkified grungy rock. The guitar drops out and it becomes simply a bass and drum show and then just like that?.. poof! it's gone

"Seas And Stars" (6:18) begins with a bending reverberating ambient synth tone that is joined by a super slow and mellow clean guitar and as the synth swirls around, the guitar develops a melodic run. It remains on super chill mode. The ambience swirls while the guitar only intermittent plucks out a few notes that have a somewhat bluesy feel. There is no bass or drums on this one. It's ok but nothing outrageously interesting either

This PIKE i neither love nor hate. It's just average

2.5 rounded down