Mark Vickness
Interconnected
(Mark Vickness)

Mark Vickness presents a finger-picked guitar instrumental album pretty much unlike anything you have ever heard. On his latest album, Interconnected, he enlists Mads Tolling’s violin, Joseph Hebert’s cello, Dan Feiszli’s bass, and Ty Burhoe’s tabla across nine compositions that bring “acoustic fusion” to the fore.

Opening with the title track, we get Vickness’ strong picking style flowing into the string players, lifting us until the last third of the tune when Burhoe’s tabla really gets us going. As is evident throughout this album, Vickness lets his fellow players shine, speaking to his humbleness allowing others their due.

Scratching, picking, and tapping all across his guitar, we get the second tune, a solo piece from Vickness called “Grey Skye.” We get a good sprinkling of these acoustic-guitar only interludes across Interconnected.

We are up and running to a strong acoustic-strummed beat on “Hot Apple Stuff/studio version” (there is a live version of this song included here as well). Again, Vickness lays back to let his string players have the main melody and Burhoe some nice interjection with his singular percussion. This one gets nice and jaunty mid-way.

“Mia Lucia” is another piece featuring Vickness, but again he has Burhoe enter for a time. The single-note melody over the picking is sorrowful…and perfect. “For Every Child,” is a sweet song, with Tolling and Hebert nicely mixing, and another solo piece, “One Day Over A Thousand,” closes.

Its obvious Vickness is a killer acoustic guitar player and solid composer. Still, the man’s heart is truly on display on how he works a whole full unit to masterful playing on the mighty fine Interconnected.