The musical main man behind forward thinking instrumentalists Animals As Leaders has now been featured in Rolling Stone’s new series entitled Young Guns : Guitar Power. Each episode presenter, Matt Sweeney, is to learn some tricks and licks off of up and coming musicians and its Tosin Abasi’s turn. Whilst beginning with some small talk, finding out that Abasi initially began to play music in the form of the clarinet whilst then got attracted to the guitar is interesting. We’re then treated to an example of how Abasi uses tension in songs, as they have no singer, emotion can be key in order for songs to resonate and plays a riff from “Air Chrysalis“. Interspersed with how Abasi was able to hone his technique through instructional videos with  “guys with an Ibanez and big hair” ie Paul Gilbert and Yngwe Malmsteen, who is a fiend at the Harmonic Minor Scale and we’re shown a couple of signature Malmsteen licks. We’re then moved onto how Abasi began his tapping legacy, citing Van Halen as an influence pushing the boundaries for what would be conceived as convetional tapping, Abasi then shows a simple chord (Emaj7) and adds his flourish to form most of what the Animals As Leaders sound is about. Then we’re sprung into hyper space with his slap technique as demonstrated with a riff from “An Infinite Regression” off their previous album Weightless.

Its clear that Tosin Abasi is a formidable guitar player and not only a master of the instrument itself, but very much thinking outside the box even when it comes to the contemporary way in which you play. Its definitely an interesting watch, especially if you were to be a musician, rendering a lot their guitar wizardry actually rather simple ideas with complex outcomes. You can catch Animals As Leaders along with Tesseract in their November tour.