Keir Moore is a talented guitarist from the UK who has just released his debut guitar instrumental “Twelve Steps” showcasing not only Moore’s amazing guitar play skills but also an obvious love for composition beyond the average shredder. The album, ‘TWELVE STEPS‘ features 10 tracks of blistering guitar work that seamlessly blends elements of metal, rock, acoustic and classical music against a backdrop of relentless guitar work.
The opening track is a ferocious shred style track called “Darkness Breaking” that combines Metal riffs and arpeggios with ambient breakdowns and then the last third of the track changes direction with a melodic theme and solo that carries all the way to the piano outro. This track exemplifies Keir’s compositional style, he likes to depth to his tracks with layered synth and percussion tracks and in the track “Kafrika Manidini” the tapping and sweep picking sudden fades out half way through and is replaced with a string ensemble and piano solo which builds again slowly with a choir, nylon string guitar and a fast alternate picked motif that ascends to a great crescendo.
But it’s not all shredding, the track ‘Tron But Not Forgotten‘ has a clean solo guitar playing the main theme while a Keir overlays slide with a classic call and response idea as well as adding harmonies to the main theme. This is very cinematic, I can image this music working well on a soundtrack. Also the track ‘Those Days‘ is a more subdued ballad style track which breaks up the shredding nicely. And if you like a bit of acoustic guitar ‘AC Grin & Tonic‘ shows Keir is also an accomplished fingerpicker too with this track that is half Tommy Emmanuel, half Michael Hedges. I really like how it suddenly changes from to the tapped style for the middle section and then back to the original theme for the last part.
If you love shred there is plenty on offer too, “Flying“, “Master 8” and the awesome groover “Snatch” all serve up awesome riffs and incredible fretboard gymnastics. If you like Andy James for instance you will love Keir’s heavier tracks.
The closing track on ‘Twelve Steps‘ is an Piano and orchestra composition called “The End Of Something“, now the actual recording uses sampled instruments as I’m sure Keir’s budget didn’t stretch quite to hiring the LSO but I would love to hear this performed one day by an actual orchestra, maybe he should launch a Kickstarter project to get the BBC Symphony Orchestra to record it? I’d back that!
Here is Keir playing his track “Darkness Breaking” from “Twelve Steps”:
For more info about Keir and where to purchase ‘Twelve Steps‘ as well as lessons check out http://www.keirmoore.com/.
UPDATE
You can now buy the album on iTunes, follow this link – http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/twelve-steps/id555071485?ls=1.
