UNSETTLED

Impressive, fresh and atmospheric. One of the best instrumental albums I've heard lately. Dean Watson is a capable multi instrumentalist, plays with taste, force and technical abilities that are shown through this first solo album. He played all the instruments and its impressive how the complete piece sounds like a tight band ensemble. Never getting too technical or flashy, this album has a wonderful taste-atmosphere that easily leads the listener to enjoy each part.

There are some things that tend to hurt a solo project. One of the most evident is that the music tends to have only one dimension, one approach and became plain. This is NOT the case of this album. Each track has its own flavor, identity and let you discover some nice places to imagine things. The best way to describe the music is: Stimulating. Weather following a nice clean keyboard solo or hearing a wonderful jazzy phrase, a keyboard space sound section or a pretty heavy (but very "classy") guitar riff, each song has personality and when you see the painting from which the songs were inspired, the stimulation is perfect to take you to a very nice place. Even the dark moments are pleasing, at least to my ears.

Another thing that sometimes tends to hurt a self made production is that the mixing is not always perfect, some details are missing. Well, again, here you won't find those wrong details. It's evident that the musician made a dedicated job and the result is a shining piece of music. Especially the choices for the sounds of keyboards and guitar distortions, those are perfect and merge very well together.

No excesses, no self indulgences, not trying to project pretentious boundaries, this album has a great magic or vibe, you won't feel like a shredding demonstration, this is music and leave you something, project energy and emotion.

I like the whole album because it's a pleasure to the ears, but I will point to a couple of songs that just have the power to entertain you. DIP is one of those songs that you just can't stop listening to. It has vibe, nice rhythm, wonderful sound choices and it's just wonderful. Out of the Mist is another great track, very dark and mellow but fresh at the same time.

So, don't overlook this album, this a wonderful piece of music that every instrumental lover would love for sure, and I'm already a fan of Dean Watson. I hope to hear more of him soon. 4.5 stars and maybe growing. Pleasing and fresh. That's it.