When you base your music on intricate playing of an acoustic guitar, there’s always a danger that your music presented on an album can turn out to be a bit overbearing and same-ish, unless you have technique, capabilities and inventiveness of one John Fahey. Even then, you might run into problems of that kind.
One of the possible solutions is to join forces with other artists/musicians with similar musical inclinations and capabilities, and if musical inventiveness and imagination are present, you just might be on the way to creating some interesting, intriguing music.
That seems to have been the idea of San Francisco acoustic guitar expert Mark Vickness for joining forces with six other musicians (Mads Tolling/violin; Matt Renzi/winds; Joseph Hebert/cello; Dan Feiszli/bass; Ty Burhoe/tabla; MB Gordy/percussion), creating Mark Vickness Interconnected collective (hence MVI) to create this latest project In The Rain Shadow.
The concept might have sounded simple on paper, combining ambient/pastoral moods with the complex changes exhibited by prog rock artists like Third Ear Band and exemplifying the virtuosity all involved possess.
Yet, executing such a concept properly to create music that doesn’t fall into the traps either New Age or prog rock genres do possess is actually quite hard to execute. But Vickness and his collaborators are able to do so, by creating some inventive compositions where there seems to be no competition to show off their instrumental prowess, channeling knowledge and capabilities for a mutual musical goal – listener’s enjoyment.
