Scott Reeder’s extensive and influential resume in extreme music - bassist for doom metallers the Obsessed and desert rockers Kyuss, producer for Orange Goblin and Goatsnake - will certainly inspire certain preconceptions about his solo debut, TunnelVision Brilliance. They should be summarily discarded; Reeder has created an album of incredible diversity, its power and density balanced and interwoven with equal portions of delicacy and melodicism. Composed, performed and produced in isolated fits and starts over the past 18 years, TunnelVision Brilliance is Reeder’s work alone, with no outside influences whatsoever. The album reflects a completely different facet of Reeder’s musical persona, drawing on his early love of both Black Flag and Cheap Trick, his live work with psychedelic garage rockers Nebula and his groundbreaking metal career, not in bits and pieces but in a unified, cohesive synthesis of his total experience. As a result, TunnelVision Brilliance is a trippy and atmospheric creative statement, Reeder’s versatile vision of himself as extreme music’s Roger Waters and an impressive display of his unlimited talents.
