On 31st October, 2014, I attended one of the best live music performances ever for me until now. Alex Machacek on guitar, Rami Lakkis on bass, and Dana Hawkins on drums - The Alex Machacek Trio. One spellbinding performance. These three super talented musicians beautifully brought together all those musical notes into an amazing aural experience, a musical conversation, and a journey to be remembered.

I hadn’t heard much about Alex Machacek until about a month ago, when the news about him coming to Mumbai for a gig went circling around social media. Following the buzz, I decided to give a few of his tracks a listen on YouTube, and found his music quite appealing and interesting. Also, I read a few articles about Alex, which stated him as being one of the most innovative guitar players in the contemporary music scene. All this led me to go ahead and book the show tickets.

The Alex Machacek Trio at St. Andrews Auditorium in Mumbai turned out to be an unforgettable experience. Alex’s super expressive guitar playing created a sea of moods in that auditorium. It was a trip. One could not help but just flow along with his great legato technique. For me, Dana Hawkins was the biggest attention grabber on the show with his extraordinary drumming skill. He created the groove and swing in the performance, filling the whole performance with beautifully complex drum parts. And when it came to a solo on drums, he totally nailed that. He played with so much feel that it got me to almost start air drumming along with his parts, though it was hard to keep up, given his outstanding skill (and I’m hardly a drummer). Rami’s bass-lines gave the whole performance a "gel-well" feel acting like a cement-in-brick-wall kind of element. Bass guitar is a very impactful and important part in a jazz/rock performance. And hats off to Rami’s amazing skill on the bass, he not only did provide that binding factor, but delivered amazing melodies and lead parts on bass. Listening to those amazing lead parts on a bass guitar left me wondering. For me that kind of bass playing was something very inspiring.

Improvisation being the most important part of jazz music was totally evident in this performance. It seemed like the three musicians on stage are conversing with each other, only through music, and as the audience I am enjoying that musical conversation. And it doesn’t take long before one, even as audience gets totally immersed and involved in it, tapping feet and rocking your head to the beat. There were moments in the performance when Alex was riffing away on his guitar, Rami was playing counter bass lines to those guitar parts, and Dana was throwing in amazing drum parts onto that. It was all so very well syncopated. Three instrumentalists playing different rhythms and still sounding beautiful together, like weaving an intricate aural web. These guys are true masters of their art.

I almost every time cannot help but notice the gear and equipment at a gig (I’m a gear head when it comes to audio equipment), and so I did in this one as well, though from a far off distance from the stage. Alex’s gear involved a custom Bill DeLap “headless” guitar which he played through a silver face Fender amp (a Fender Twin Reverb or Fender Deluxe Reverb most probably). He used several effect pedals too, out of which his use of volume pedal was the most noticeable. He very creatively created beautiful swelling sounds on his guitar using that volume pedal, which were heard on almost every song I think. Rami played a 6 string bass guitar through a Hartke bass amp head wired into two 4x10 bass cabinets. Dana played on a 5-piece drum kit with several cymbals, but it wasn’t a “full-blown” drum kit spanning half the stage length. It was pretty basic, but still he managed to do magic out of it in that performance.

During the break, I was so much impacted by the music that I ran out in the break between the two sets, and I bought two of Alex’s music CDs which they had at the merchandise stall at the venue (that’s all the cash I had with me then, I would have loved to have the third album as well which was available there as well). And as a souvenir to mark my attendance of this gig in my timeline, I went backstage and met the band and got the CDs signed by Alex. I feel content that I have some great music for the coming weeks. I would definitely attend any of their future gigs in the city. Last but not the least, a big thanks to First Edition Arts for getting such great artists to the city and making the show happen.

- By Abhishek Gupta

Abhishek Gupta is a sound engineering student at Digital Academy, Mumbai and has also graduated from BITS Pilani Hyderabad Campus with a bachelor’s degree in Information Systems. He loves everything about sound and audio, both creative and the technical aspect; He is a self-learnt keyboardist and guitarist, with basic knowledge of music theory As an avid music listener, he listens to almost any genre of music and is always open to suggestions for the same. Zeroing down to a few specific genres is not easy. The list is endless. To name a few on the playlist, Porcupine Tree, Opeth, Mark Knopfler, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Guthrie Govan, The Aristocrats, Steely Dan, Dire Straits, Gary Moore, Iron Maiden, Lamb of God, Tool, Karnivool, Dream Theatre, Yanni, western classical, orchestral music, film scores, and many more.