I felt it was time to give a little rundown on what's happening in Phi-ville at the moment. The recording of "Reality Is My Plaything" continues, with the focus on getting the vocals right. Its been a wonderful learning experience letting the songs teach me what they want from me in terms of lyrics, vocal melody and delivery. I often wonder if I even have a choice in the matter... Its all starting to pull together in a most wonderful way, even though its been one of hell of a profound artistic challenge. Hopefully we'll get all the vocals finished in the next few weeks, which will give me August/September to finish "Normalizer 2: Astrodiscombobulation" - the album I'm recording with Marco Minnemann as part of his Normalizer 2 boxset. This is proving to be a lot of creative fun adding my idiosyncratic pizza topping to Marco's stone-baked drum pizza base...

Those of you who like dynamic superbly crafted guitar instrumental compositions with a Lyle Workman vibe would definitely be interested in the new CD "Guitar Diaries" by the Stefan Rosqvist Band. Its always refreshing when a guitarist allows their considerable technique to be in service to the music and not the other way around. Stefan also kindly invited me to contribute a quirky guitar solo to the song "Decisions". More info and audio clips can be found here:

GUITAR DIARIES with links to guitar9, cdbaby etc...

It would seem that this is sadly the last official CD release of Liquid Note Records, an acclaimed UK based boutique instrumental label that I've worked with in the past (The Alchemists Vol 1&2). Although there may well be one more highly ambitious LNR project that I'm potentially gonna be involved in... I should have some more info on this in the next few months.

Looks like I'm heading back to San Diego in January now, for the recording of my next guitar instrumental album. I'm hooking up again with Modern Drummer cover star and all round mutant drummer Marco Minnemann and Steve Vai/ Mike Keneally/ Dethlok bass player extraordinaire Bryan Beller. Its always fun recording and hanging out with Bryan and Marco, not to mention the fact that they make my music sound so darn good... Maybe I'll even have some preview clips from "Reality Is My Plaything" next time to let you hear what I mean. The CD should be done by the end of the year, but if you can't wait that long, and if you haven't already done so, check out the newly remastered and remixed re-release of my 1997 album "Anomalies". Lots of "re's" going on here! Anomalies even has its own myspace page where you can sample its quirky delights and become a friend -

ANOMALIES MYSPACE PAGE

All for now, thank you and goodnight.
Be well,
Phi