New Color

• Track Listing

14 year-old Fingerstyle Acoustic Guitarist Ben Lapps' debut album, The New Color, features almost all original music in his own unique playing style. With influences from Justin King and Michael Hedges, each tune is single track solo acoustic guitar - beautiful to listen to and mesmerizing to watch. After first seeing a video of Justin King playing 'Square Dance' on youtube, he couldn't help but launch his guitar playing into a new direction. Although he has adapted a new technique and style of his own, Ben's songwriting abilities and original taste in music still shine through on this all-acoustic collection. Drawing you in from the very beginning, the haunting overtones of Reverie capture the imagination and send it far away. Progressing into a fantastic set of rhythms and melodies, it is an obvious favorite. Showing roots in Led Zeppelin, he beautifully covers a classic of theirs, Going to California, with his own arrangement written with fascinating tapping and tasteful harmonics. Other notables such as Jasper's Street and Marigold prove the intense combination of feeling and skill with which Ben writes and plays. All of these lead to the final track - a cover of the infamous Justin King song 'Phunkdified.' Altogether, the album as a whole is a diversely rich collection of intense feeling coupled with outrageous musicality.