Artist: Steen Grontved
   Title: Night Vision Goggles
   Label: Lion Music

After several years as session musician appearing on numerous albums, mostly in Denmark, Steen Grontved finally heads his own debut album ‘Night Vision Goggles’.

The album itself mixes various styles and influences from the realms of jazz and rock and fusing both into one altogether different musical experience.  Things get underway with ‘Timber’, a guitar/keyboard rich mix that leads nicely into the next track ‘The Worm’, another fusion of keys and guitar.

The album continues along its gentle path with the sublime ‘Playground’ before picking it up the tempo a touch with the more melodic tones of ‘Home Planet’.  Next the rockier ‘Run’ which really gets the heart pumping with some quite fantastic fret work.

Grontved respects his roots with ‘Bye’, which is a take on a traditional Danish song melody and a poignant piece to say the least.  Grontved describes the next track ‘Secret Lab’ as the brother track to 'The Worm', and when you listen to it you can feel were Steen is coming from on this one.

Another delve into the sometimes inspirational world of guitar album are the next two tracks firstly ‘My Butterfly’, a swirling mix of guitar and bass and secondly ‘Still Here’, a more melodic track that will sit well with both the conventional guitar album lovers and also those who like something a bit different from their guitar albums.

Steen ventures into the more tribal elements of world music as ‘Round And Around’ uses West African rhythms as its backbone for this gentle melody.   And what guitar album wouldn’t be complete without something a little diverse and quirky and that's what ‘What Mango’ is, quirky.

The album concludes with a little Spanish guitar feel on ‘Find The Pick’ which Grontved describes as slap guitar, which rounds off a very accessible guitar album and one which will see Grontved playing a more major role on the guitar album scene.

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