David Ralston is the new international music story, bar none. Take a pair of scissors and cut the words off the cover of his latest Album, The Lucidity of Insanity, and put it into the dictionary. David Ralston is the lucidity of insanity. In this al [+]David Ralston is the new international music story, bar none. Take a pair of scissors and cut the words off the cover of his latest Album, The Lucidity of Insanity, and put it into the dictionary. David Ralston is the lucidity of insanity. In this album, Ralston's third, he shows us the working life and musical genius of the new international "established artist."
Ralston has steadily, chapter by chapter, album by album, created much more than just great music. He has evolved and created an entirely new type of "established international musician." The world of music is not just changing - it has changed. And many of the great artists from that previous established music world are flocking to Ralston to add their genius and chops as they shift toward the new international music world that Ralston is creating. I hear the word "family" more than I hear the word "band." And this is a big, diverse, growing family. There is a refreshing lack of the usual condescension and artistic rivalry among very different artists and their different styles - and even the continents they come from.
What exactly is this new type of stardom? Well, it is more honest, more genuine, and more subtle than your simplistic top-forty formula, because it comes onto the album from the heart, through the basement - not simply onto plastic, through a committee, and a promoter. But don't confuse this basement product with amateur stuff. This is NOT your dad's basement music. This basement is a warm Japanese home environment with beautiful smiling children riding around your feet on tricycles, the pungent smell of dinner mixing with the salt, musky air of the East China Sea, and the soft chatter of some of the best damned musicians on the planet perfecting their punches in a creative environment that most "mainstream musicians" will never experience - in the U.S. or elsewhere. I know you've heard this about almost every "established musician" you know, but listen to Lucidity of Inanity for yourself to see that without a doubt David Ralston absolutely defines his own product, and it is a whole new type of music product.
For him it's easy, because he is his own product - the songs flow out of him, as do the gritty guitar licks and the inspired vocal growl inflections. Sure, every musi
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