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Lubera, Bill: Global Warning
Bill Lubera Global Warning album new music review

Lubera, Bill: Global Warning

Instrumental Guitar
3.75/5.0

Independent/Self-promotion
www.myspace.com/billlubera
www.billlubera.com
By Craig Hartranft,  09.27.2010

An American guitarist doing a his first instrumental album? There's a double-edged sword that Bill Lubera should not have to die upon. Sorry for being overly dramatic, but the fate of most guitar virtuoso's albums are solemn indeed.

On the one, and positive, side the album is an intimately personal expression of the artist's devotion to his craft. On Global Warning, Mr. Lubera wears his musical heart on his sleeve for all to see. We are better for it. His guitar mastery is brilliant, creative, and deeply emotional. This work is his blood, sweat and tears. Lubera invokes neo-classical and progressive strokes throughout as he puts musical color to climate conditions. To put it out there for critical commentary can be akin to letting yourself by raped by the unforgiving unappreciative Philistines lurking on the sidewalk.

Offering complex time signatures and modal changes, Lubera exposes his immense talent. Some arrangements are peculiar, suggesting something more than what a song title suggests. While Blizzard reveals, in composition, a snowy onslaught, Earthquake begins so mildly you wonder when the earth will truly quake. But it does in the end. Earthquakes can sneak up on you, and Lubera's arrangement captures that mystery. This may be the overall description of Lubera's Global Warning: efficient and innovative creativity that both intrigues and entertains the listener.

Global Warning has both profound genius and subtle accessibility. You could pop this disc into your player during a casual party with friends and you're guests would be charmed, entertained, and wondering where they could pick up this title. If you think this belittles Mr. Lubera's expertise, I would strongly disagree. Every artists wants recognition and appreciation, even in the most pedestrian sense (without the Philistines, of course).

On the other side of the sword (remember the analogy), Global Warning is still an instrumental recording by a guitar virtuoso. While brilliant and entertaining as it is, this work will probably go unnoticed, except by guitar fiends. If anything Bill Lubera's Global Warning is perfect material for Lion Music, the nearly last international label for guitar heroes. After all, Lubera was guided by and Global Warning was produced by Lion Music's guitar legend George Bellas. Thankfully, Lubera is not as neo-classical wiggly as Bellas can often be. The bottom line is this: the sharper side of the double-edged sword is the simple fact that instrumental guitar albums garner little interest or sales. This may be a difficult to understand, but it's the sad reality. Let's hope for better for Bill Lubera.

Therefore, I encourage you, faithful Dangerdog reader, to check out Bill Lubera's Global Warning. You will be immensely satisfied.




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In Short

Global Warning has both profound genius and subtle accessibility. You could pop this disc into your player during a casual party with friends and you're guests would be charmed, entertained, and wondering where they could pick up this title.

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