Over the last few years South African guitar virtuoso Dan Patlansky’s star has been on a definite rise, hand-picked as the support act for Joe Satriani’s European Tour in 2015 and with rave reviews for his 2015 UK album release ‘Dear Silence Thieves,’ he’s seen both that and his 2012 album ’20 Stones’ hit the high reaches of the Blues charts.
Since then he’s headlined London’s The Borderline, as well as at the Planet Rockstock Festival in Wales and played an eight-show joint tour with British blues rockers King King as well as a further eighteen European shows as part of the European launch of his 2016 album ‘Intro-Vertigo.’
2018 sees the launch of his latest outing ‘Perfection Kills’ and after just a few listens it’s easy to both see what all the fuss is about and why his star still hasn’t stopped climbing.
Opening with ‘Johnny’ the story of a troubled young man you’re eased into the song before a crash, build and funky groove smacks you round the head then eases you back out again. It’s that light and shade, melody and riff that is the most compelling feature of a beautifully balanced album, well that and the searing guitar of course.
But it’s also an album of tones, textures, subtleties and great truths. ‘Never Long Enough’ that follows has a certain laid back cool and ‘Mayday’ is even sweeter and more delicate before it grows wings and glides into the skies like liquid gold.
‘Too Far Gone’ has far more spike and bite starting with a grunt and some incendiary guitar and falling to a valley deep grove before ‘Judge a Man’ takes a more traditional approach to the form and is guitar heaven all the way, resting on some swirling keys. ‘Junket Man’ by way of contrast just saunters in before exploding – it’s one of my real highlights here playing the light and shade of Patlansky’s style as it does.
‘Eyes’ takes us on a smooth funky ride through modern obsessions and if that’s not enough to get you up and dancing the guitar is to the fore again for the laid back crawl of the languid ‘Shake The Cage’ which goes down as smooth as silk. The album rounds out in fine style with the instant connection of ‘My Dear Boy’ a song for Dan’s son Jack and the heavy blues and final word of ‘Dog Day’ the first single which is available as an instant download to all who pre-order the album.
This may not quite be my favourite of Dan Patlansky’s album but it certainly goes close, it’s the sound of a man growing in confidence with each year and the sound of a man with plenty still to say – this is going to rock up a storm live.
