It's always interesting to take the walk to the mailbox. Will there be bills? Well, of course there are bills but in my case I also get the chance to look for other cool things in my mailbox. Packages of all shapes and sizes carrying round discs with sounds, melodies and rhythms, press kits with cool gifts, and bill come to my mailbox. In this trip I discover the EvO:R member Jimmy Caterine.

Jimmy Caterine, former guitarist for the group Sacred Rite offers an 11 song journey through the realms of “Rebirth”, “Soul Discovery”, and “Cognition”. Caterine's love of classical music drives this disc. The evidence of this is not just touched on in this disc but is splattered all over the place. I've always been a huge fan of the blending of classical strings and modern rock guitar and this disc had plenty of both. It never became an indulgent journey into extreme speed and dextarity as many of such CD eventually become. This CD remained very controlled throughout even though a few times I thought the guitar pyrotechics were just seconds away.

The first time I listened to “Cognition” I was drawn to the complexity of his music. I could hear different sounds and effects going on in the background, things I wasn't use to hearing on the rash of many current CD projects. The additional soundscape added a number of layers to some very complex chord patterns and allowed Caterine to really express himself when he chose those magic moments.

My only missgivings about the Cognition project was that it was recorded in a home studio using a set of head phones or mixed down via a computer using small near field multi-media speakers to do the final mixdown. Why should this be a big concern on my part? Because this is one damn good disc. One that screams out for a bigger and wider soundstage when as a listener you want to hear everything this disc has to offer.
Now on the brighter side: with a good set of headphones you can hear the well crafted music of Jimmy Caterine.

Cognition is a true listeners disc. What I mean by that is, what you get from this disc is not going to be the exact same as when someone else listens to it for the first time. I think every listener will take something with them after each listen..

One of the things I like to look for in a song is not only the melody, after all we all like something that we can easily identify a song by and usually it is the melody, but the under lying accents of the other instruments. On Cognition it was hard sometimes to tell which was the melody and what was the rhythm. The parts blending well enough for there to be two maybe three distinct patterns going on that could be followed as the main theme of the song, giving the listener a large pallet to listen to in just one song.

As a first pre-listen conception I thought this would be a standard electric guitar disc. Having familiar distorted and overdriven melodies, I am glad I was mistaken. Don't get me wrong I love a good lead guitar riff but the acoustic guitar on this disc is well placed and very appropriate.

At the time of this review I think I am on my fifth listen of this disc. Often times, because of the number of discs I receive, the disc gets listened to enough times to get a feel for the music then it is put into my files. This disc will not get to the files any time soon as it will stay in my CD player for quite a while.

That is the best recommendation I can come up with for Jimmy Caterine's “Cognition”…It’s a keeper!
Bill Carrera

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