For Norway, I really dig Trond Holter (Dream Police, Wig Wam, Ole Evenrude) style-wise as #2 in the rock guitar department after Mr. Tekrø. Tor Østby (Conception, Ark, DC Cooper) is high up there, and probably the most technically advanced of the bunch. I'd say he tops the metal/progressive guitar list. A sort of unsung hero would be Trond Are (Sea Of Dreams): their music is really intense, mixing so many styles. Too bad the vocalist is so annoying that this cd is not spun very often. Ken Ingwersen (Rags, Speed, Street Lethal) is a damn good guitarist, who I also got to meet in Oslo, 2003.
A great unsung jazz-fusion hero is Tore Morten Andreasson, who I discovered via MySpace. He's a really great writer and player, but I can't find his cd's anywhere, even for download. I asked him to buy them personally and he said "no, give me your adress and I'll send you them." That was over two years ago. I prompted to pay several more times, receiving the same promise. No cd's, just some MySpace tracks. Just sell 'em to me, darnit! Never met a musician who didn't want to get his music out there to interested people! At least his newest release is available on CDBaby, so I'll grab that one.
Of course, Terje Rypdal is legendary. He even gets featured very positively in American jazz and guitar mags every now and then. I own a ton of his stuff from over the years. He's an all-time fave of my brother's.
I have an instrumental release by one Ronny Heimdal, from Bergen, who plays a killer jazz fusion style highly influenced by Allan Holdsworth. This guy's no joke, that's for sure. To hear his AOR/rock side, he plays guitars on Main Attraction's Keep On Coming Back with Bennech Lyngboe on vocals.
Mads Eriksen started off as a rock guitarist, and his instrumental debut is pretty cool, combining rock with various cultural music styles from around the world. He has since moved into a country guitar direction, but even then his Suburban Cowboy is pretty impressive in the chops department. |
