Ultra Sound – Slang (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

Everyone needs a bit of Slang in their life. Why? Because you have never heard anything quite like this before. Okay, that isn’t exactly true. There are lots of sounds and styles you will find here that will be slightly or very familiar to you but you will never have heard them put together in such a new and unique way before.

Rock may be the basis of what he does, but these 10 instrumentals wander every corner of that broad landscape, pushing, testing and even hopping boundaries at will, conducting fabulous genre-splicing experiments and perhaps even inventing a few new hybrids along the way.

Heat Wave is the first single from the album, a strutting, bluesy groover, liberally sprinkled with cool guitar motifs and crunchy rhythms, cool riffs and a revolving door of hooks. But this is just one small slice of what the full album is all about and across its delicious span you will find everything from melodic hard rock to bluesy funk, ambient classical to earthy folk, smooth jazz fusion, and even artistic prog rock all taking their turn under the spotlight…actually, often not even waiting their turn but mixing and matching as Slang and the song dictates.

But a Slang album is never a solo affair and here he is joined by veteran session keyboard player and film scorer Jun Abe, vocalist Misaki, Johaness Linstead Band’s Jordan Abraham and the unmistakable bass playing of Renato Rodrigues. As for everything else, that is pure Slang.