Rodrigo y Gabriela – ‘In Between Thoughts…A New World’ album review
After meeting as 15-year-olds, Rodrigo Sánchez and Gabriela Quintero, better known as Rodrigo y Gabriela, bonded over a shared love of music. By the 1990s, they were discovered by Damien Rice and taken on tour, a setting in which they developed a unique brand of instrumental guitar music.
Inspired by their love of a wide range of genres, from the heavy metal that brought them together to jazz and flamenco, Rodrigo y Gabriela have since earned themselves a Grammy for ‘Best Contemporary Instrumental Album’ with 2019’s Mettavolution. They even collaborated with Hans Zimmer on Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.
Now, the duo are ready to release their new album, In Between Thoughts…A New World, via ATO Records. With decades of experience under their belt, Rodrigo y Gabriela have firmly established themselves as masters of creating dynamic instrumental pieces, and In Between Thoughts…A New World is the perfect demonstration of their abilities.
The album, comprised of nine songs, keeps listeners hooked despite the lack of a traditional pop song structure or lyrics. Channelling their experience of working on movie scores, Rodrigo y Gabriela create a surging sonic display of cinematic goodness, using their guitars to represent rising and falling action. Each song feels like a mini-movie, containing stirring riffs, mesmeric backing strumming, and glorious, soaring strings that add extra tension to every piece.
Sánchez explains that the album was inspired by the pair’s discovery of the Hindu philosophy of Advaita Vedanta: “The music just started flowing out, without any real intention,” he said. “When we looked back, we realised we’d come up with nine songs that told the story of our coming to understand the Advaita path, in the exact perfect order. We didn’t change the foundation of the songs from that point, so what you hear on the album is the music as we were creating it.”
In Between Thoughts…A New World opens with ‘True Nature’, an exhilarating start to the record that sets the perfect precedent for the following tracks. Moving between intense strumming and unforgettable riffs that could have been lifted straight from a ’60s western, ‘True Nature’ slows down before speeding straight back up again like the sonic equivalent of a racing horse. On the following track, ‘The Eye That Catches The Dream’, the duo demonstrate their ability to create beautifully quiet moments, evoking a meditative and reflective sound.
As the album continues, Rodrigo y Gabriela move between the pace of their material, quickening and slowing things down with regularity, even incorporating synths among their classic sound, highlighting the breadth of their influences. ‘The Ride of the Mind’ sounds like the soundtrack to an intense heist, with its smacking percussion adding greater suspense as strings whirl the track to a close.
Another album highlight is ‘Broken Rage’, a danceable electric guitar-led cut that features a fantastically mind-bending solo, alongside the rare instance of a human voice punctuating the soundscape with “Hey! Hey! Hey” refrains. With that, a distant electronic voice can be heard on ‘Finding Myself Leads Me To You’, which weaves between futuristic sounds and classic flamenco guitars.
In Between Thoughts…A New World is a virtuosic display of Rodrigo y Gabriela’s impeccable guitar playing that is truly uninhibited. The duo harness the impressive ability to tell intricate stories without saying a word, and these songs are sure to conjure up rich images in listeners’ minds.
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