Boris & Michio Kurihara - Rainbow

All too often, when band and virtuoso unite the results are little more than a clash of egos, with the sound ultimately defined by whose ego emerged the most inflated. Certainly, while the outcomes vary, this formula doesn't often blossom into much more than the sum of its individual parts. Thankfully, Boris and Michio Kurihara put a massive kink in a usually inescapable downward trajectory. The fruits of this unlikely matrimony are odd, no question about that. There are many moments of bizarre and unsettling delicacy amidst heavy, chugging riffs and psychedelic leads. Like Santana meets Tool, with the appropriate introspection swimming amongst some expansive sonic explorations. With nods towards the hallucinatory folk of Ghost and a little of The Mars Volta's sporadic dynamics, Rainbow is mostly a rip-roaring, speaker-shredding drone with a fair few solos that would have Omar himself scratching his afro. [Neil Ferguson]