Matteo Mancuso is more or less half-way through writing the follow-up to his bravura debut album, The Journey, with four songs written, another four, maybe five to go, and while he says he is enjoying some downtime before hitting the road next month, you get the impression he is itching to get it done.
Sure, all of us in his audience are still grappling with the compositional audacity of it all, jazz, rock, fusion, all emulsified in those big atmospheres. The Journey felt like a landmark release for instrumental fusion, Mancuso announcing his presence with a virtuosic fingerstyle approach that electrified electric guitar and yet was adapted from classical guitar. The “virtuoso of virtuosos” was how Tosin Abasi described him. He was not alone. The Journey made good on the hype
