Buckethead- Funnel Weaver (2002)

Reviewing something like “Funnel Weaver” at any length would be remarkably difficult, and its becoming increasingly obvious that my reviews will have a huge level of variance in their lengths, and albums like this will be much shorter reviews, but I at least hope they're more in depth than other blogs, but instead of wasting time with banter, without further ado, here’s the review.

Buckethead, in addition to his own talents, has always had a stable of fully capable bassists and drummers at his disposable. For the most part though, he foregoes them on this record, using a mix of sampled beats and occasional synthesized foolery to lay down 49 tracks not exceeding three minutes, with the vast majority being between 30 and 90 seconds, the average being just over a minute long.

What these tracks comprise of varies from track to track, some are just Bucket fooling around on the guitar, others are more solid riffs, and others would suffice as the intros to songs or even albums. However compared to the previous three records (Somewhere Over the Slaughterhouse, Monsters and Robots and Colma), the album is a step in a heavier direction.

This is still very young in Bucket’s career, it’s only his 7th studio album, and it sounds like it’s a period of intense creativity, because all of these “Ideas”, which is the best way I can describe them, could be developed into really interesting tracks on their own, this is the type of stuff that a few years later might have been developed into a multi-disc box set ala “Best Regards”, “In Search of The”, or “Monolith”, although it’s musically distinct from all of those releases.

One of the biggest levels of separation between this and his newer albums is that he’s also not quite hit his stride in the department of musical emotions, but on the flip side, he’s doing more on the Avant-Garde side of things, it reminds me of an underdeveloped, and more organic predecessor to the sound of 2005’s “Kaliedoscalp”, without the intense sound manipulations as well.

As far as it’s “worthiness” as an album, it’s certainly not a starting point. It contains some great riffs, but when you take the time to notice them, you’re just left a tad disappointed that he didn’t finish the idea. It makes for a great listen if you’re multitasking and enjoy a bit of demented heavy avant-garde, and it’s a very interesting release, so my recommendation would be for experienced Buckethead listeners to certainly give this a listen.