Dominik Rüegg is Cuthead, an instrumental rock six-string slinger from Switzerland. Tones is a fine instrumental guitar rock album combining rock, jazz, and jazz-blues fusion.
The sound on this CD is very similar to the legendary Eric Johnson. When listening to all the jazz-blues fusion oriented compositions I began to think that either this album was a dedication to EJ or Rüegg simply felt strongly influenced by his work. The title is the same as EJ’s first studio album released in 1986, and that really makes you wonder.
In the end does it matter or is it relevant? Well, not really, because as it turns out the artist was unaware of Johnson and never heard any of his music, so there you go, pondering on that is a waste of time. The result regardless of anybody’s opinion on influences is that Tones is a solid album from a talented guitar player.

Cuthead is up for the task and pulls out 10 tracks from his bag of tricks and its well worth listening to a few times. A few spins is appropriate just to let it all sink in. And besides that, I really enjoyed it all.

Cockroachrun and Inspot are both flat out juiced up rockers, which is a step away from the primary sound and atmosphere he creates on this CD. Those two tracks show how the artist can be an individual without prompting you to make any comparisons to other artists, the other tracks I am afraid that the comments are going to come one way or another, but that could be a good thing too. I love this kind of music-I never get my fill, and if someone makes me think of another favorite artist, then there is a victory for the individual providing the music and me, the listener. This is exactly what happened while listening to this CD. From my perspective, it is all good.

The encapsulation or high point of this entire effort, are the tracks Tones and Tones II. The first serves as an intro, with some nice acoustic guitar, letting us know Rüegg can play beautifully and with taste besides knocking your sox off with some multicolored fusion licks or a rocker. Then the second part is the Cuthead trademark sound and the overall atmosphere that prevails on this album. I like the fretwork on this track, his takes things in different directions with varying degrees of tempos and intensity.

This is a very solid release and it displays a talented man beautifully. One never knows what direction an artist with such talents will go the next time they get in the studio to record. In the meantime, check this guy out.

- © Keith "MuzikMan" Hannaleck-www.muzikreviews.com April 15, 2006
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