Wednesday: Mestis - Pura Vida

     Regular readers should by this point have picked up on the fact that I dig instrumental music, and they may have heard me talk about Animals as Leaders a couple of times, so it should come as no surprise that I'm excited to hear about the upcoming full-length debut from AAL guitarist Javier Reyes' side project Mestis.

     Even better, Polysemy will be out in less than a month. Better still is the fact that we can all have a taste of the new material in the form of first single "Pura Vida", which even features some guest guitar work from members of another proggy instrumental outfit, CHON. It's a track that manages to be a little heavy and a little chill at the same time, with lots of interesting guitar stuff going on but none of it too over the top. Mestis has always been a somewhat different beast than Animals as Leaders, and Polysemy sounds like it could be a big step forward in the evolution of Javier and Mestis. Check it out if that sounds like it could be your thing.

Song of the Day: Set and Setting - Spiraling Uncertainties

     Cool instrumental stuff seems, thankfully, to be in ready supply these days. Among the instrumental stuff I'm digging durrently: Scale the Summit, Pomegranate Tiger, Russian Circles, Blotted Science, Animals as Leaders, Mestis, Trioscapes, Zaius, Intervals...

Song of the Day: Mestis - Te Mato

     This evening you're getting another dose of Mestis, the latin-jazz inspired instrudjent side-project of Animals as Leaders guitarist Javier Reyes for the simple reason that I finally got around to ripping my copy of Basal Ganglia and throwing it on the old mp3 player.

Song of the Day: Mestis - Menta

     Today's song comes from an act that's kind of a friend-of-a-friend sort of thing. You see, there's this instrumental prog-tech-jazz metal type band you probably know called Animals as Leaders, and in this band there are two guitarists: Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes. These two slingers of many-stringer guitars are so full of ideas that they're in another band together, the jazz-influenced T.R.A.M. Even more than that, Reyes is so super chock full of material that he's got his own solo side-project called Mestis. It's from this project's first EP that I've drawn today's song.