David M’ore – Passion, Soul & Fire
self release
12 songs time-78:21
Argentina born San Franciscan David M’ore is a guitar-slinger extraordinaire that brings deep passion and energy as he wrings super-charged notes from his custom made Stratocaster using various techniques and effects. There are times when he slows the pace to illicit beautiful atmospheric guitar passages. To say he knows his way around the fret board is an understatement. His influences include heavy rockers Deep Purple and AC-DC along with the blues. David’s voice sounds like Tom Waits with a sore throat, which makes some of the lyrics indecipherable and takes away from the flow of the songs. It’s the imaginative guitar mastery here that is the main draw, that is ably abetted by Wade Olson on drums and David De Silva on bass, creating a classic power trio.
Although three songs are based around Stevie Ray Vaughn type shuffles, it’s only a foundation for him to add his own unique approach. “The Devil’s Land” finds him utilizing his rapid fire attack in this manner. “The 12 Song” has him briefly quoting Led Zeppelins’ “You Shook Me” as the intro, then adding some Hendrix influence over the shuffle beat. This approach continues on “Liar” which adds a nice bit of wah-wah action.
Textured guitar is used to great effect on “Love Again”, as well as other songs. He often uses multiple guitar over dubs to flesh out the sound, combining acoustic, electric and slide in various combinations. One of the highlights is the instrumental guitar tour-de-force of “Johan Sebastian Blues”, that is essentially a gift to guitar geeks as he just powers through some amazing seamless playing. I even seem to detect a brief bit of influence from the Dutch prog-rockers Focus and the playing of Jan Akkerman on their international hit “Hocus Pocus”.
The other instrumental “Funky It Up” achieves great tone on a lovely biting guitar melody. The CD is summed up with a spontaneous, one take tribute to his heroes Deep Purple on their “Mistreated”. I’m not familiar with the song, but Davis pretty much captures the essence of that classic hard rock band. Curiously, this is the song where his lyrics come through the clearest.
There you have it, everything a fan of guitar based hard rock could hope for and more (no pun intended). His over-the-top growl of a voice is a bit disconcerting, but I just focus on all the guitar goodness contained here. Clocking in at just under eighty minutes, you get a lot of quantity along with the quality.
