Written by RJ Lannan
It doesn’t matter if you’re sitting on a sunny beach on the islands or on a breezy rooftop patio in downtown LA, the music of this extraordinary guitar duo would be more than apropos in either scenario. Grammy®️ Award Winning slack key guitarist Kimo West and award winning guitar virtuoso/producer Vito Gregoli team up together to offer ten fingerstyle tracks of chillaxing contemporary fare on their collaboration Kimo Vito.
Fortunately for us, West and Gregoli spent more time making the music than thinking up a title for the album. Some of the themes of the recording offer a musical tribute to one of the most famous instrumental music record labels ever created, Windham Hill Records. They handily achieve their goals by crafting music that has that 80’s feel, i.e., soft and light melodies produced when the label was starting out, but then they expand into more complex contemporary territory with artistic ease.
With a light touch of the Spanish guitar the first tune Fragile turns into a dynamic encounter of style and energies. Although the title suggests breakability, the melody flows more easily than your favorite sangria and it is just as strong. The tune is more covertly complex than when first meets the ears.
Getting to the point of it all the next track On the Road to Windham assimilates the tunings and phrasings that made the label great and establishes the main theme. It’s was always a story within a story that made the instrumental brand a seminal mainstay in the early days of the genre. Taking a guitar riff and expanding, toying, and improvising the melody, West and Gregoli not only imitate, but also improve of the formula that was the foundation of Windham Hill Records. This particular piece is a fun auditory pilgrimage with lots to experience along the way. Will Ackerman would be nodding and smiling at this point.
Bright, duo guitar blends together with a wonderful sense of balance in the frolicsome tune Southern Coast. You can imagine wind, surf, and hot sand in this this lively tune that is a lot more than just a day at the beach. There’s even a splash of waves in the music as we are treated to a celebration of warmth and fun. Keep those mojitos coming!
Michael and Michael surely pays homage to the Michaels, Hedges and Manring. Let us acknowledge Michael Hedges, a guitarist who the world lost much too soon whose imagination surpassed mere mortal understanding and Michael Manring and his ubiquitous talent of adding just the right notes (especially bass) to any composition. There’s some heavy, intricate fingerpicking in the main theme and some heavier backup of throaty bass as the notes solidify into musical praises. This one was offered live and it certainly did justice to the subject matter. Think silk and sandpaper. One of my favorites on Kimo Vito.
Land of Dreams is an exciting track featuring ghostly flute and punchy percussion underscored by flowing bass. It is quite the fantasy with an intoxicating electric guitar with sitar aspirations that develops subdued Middle Eastern influences. The relaxing vibes drift in and out of the phrasing like wisps of hookah smoke. Sit back and enjoy the journey, but proceed at your own risk.
With quite the variation on a theme, the duo offers up the well-known Lennon/McCartney standard Let it Be with an inimitable fingerstyle glaze. It is hard to believe something written in the 70s is now a standard. The Kimo Vito version is unpretentious, yet has a bit of finely crafteddrama to it. Honestly, the intro is so disparate that it took me a moment to catch the main theme. Once I did, I was hooked on this wistful version and everything fell into place as far as continuity and, I guess you would call it re-birth.
Other tracks include Where is Home Now, In Your Eyes, Pandora’s Musical Box, and Sanctum. Everything on Kimo Vito is as fresh and new as an overseas partnership could create in an improvisational relationship. Some of the material is reminiscent of the early days of the label, but there’s an innovatively bright energy that permeates just about all of the tracks.
Both Messers. Kimo and Vito seem to know what balance is all about as their combined efforts are completely complementary. Make no mistake. You can still hear West’s distinctive fingerstyle fretwork in the hoopla and the additional imaginative overlays by master producer and artist Gregoli are ubiquitous throughout. Over all, highly listenable and Very Good work.
– Reprinted with express permission from ArtisanMusicReviews.com
