Can trans-techno-fired guitar instrumentals co-exist with ambient sound collages featuring the likes of American literary great Henry Miller and intimate DADGAD-tuned vocal ballads straight out of the Nick Drake/John Martyn playbook? They can and do on “Sketches of Spam,” the 16-track, 69-minute, genre-surfing debut release from Spaghetti Eastern Music (Bad Egg Records, 30003), the solo project of New York-based guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist Sal Cataldi.

Cataldi’s much-varied sound is the product of an insatiable musical soul and a record collection rivaling the Smithsonian’s. This debut album is an hour-plus journey through contrasting moods, with instrumentals inspired by 70’s Miles, Krautrock, Ennio Morricone, Bhangra, Fripp & Eno and ECM’s icy guitar great Terje Rypdal giving way to bare-bones acoustic vocal tunes – ones oft anchored on unusual tunings, with narratives that chart the course of difficult loves, in styles that range from Brit Folk to Bossa Nova.

Spaghetti Eastern Music has received consistent critical raves, for live performances and the selective release of early mixes of works now fully realized on this debut disc. Time Out New York writes: "Cataldi's largely instrumental, Eastern-influenced jams are infused with some delicate guitar work and hauntingly moody atmosphere." Newsday adds: “Mad scientist-guitarist-keyboardist Cataldi brings da funk and throws it in a mixer with electronica, bebop and blues,” while The New York Times adds “the funk-tinged original instrumentals and acoustic vocal tunes have a beat unmistakably his own.” Called “truly excellent” by The Village Voice, “triumphantly funkified” by UPI, “a stimulating soloist” by The New York Press and “a jazz virtuoso without the need to prove it” by Aquarian Weekly. East Coast Rocker/Rolling Stone writer John Swenson, the man who penned the liner notes to Frank Zappa’s “Shut Up n Play Yer Guitar,” may have put it best, “he’s the hippie guitarist playing to another dimension.”

The authority on all things Beatles, The Beatles Examiner recently praised the album’s “ sharp soaring guitar jams” and called the distinctive cover of “Ticket to Ride,” “incredible, a wonderfully moody re-imagining” of the Lennon classic. Huffington Post dubs it “the perfect soundtrack for New York City life,” WFMU’s Irene Trudel calls it “charmingly melodic and off-center,” while popular Zappa fan sites Idiot Bastard and United Mutations gave raves to his reinvention of “Sleep Dirt,” a Zappa acoustic instrumental rarity, which appears on the CD as “Nap Dust.” The album is now enjoying airplay on radio including WFUV’s “Mixed Bag,” SiriusXM, WFMU, Oakland’s KALX, NYC-area college station including WCWP, WUSB and WHPC and many more. The CD’s title is a lighthearted tribute to Miles Davis’ atmospheric classic, “Sketches of Spain,” one ripe for this digital overload and lunchmeat age!

Recommended Listening Suggestions…

 “Downright Uptight” – The up-tempo instrumental opener, with a funky DC go-go beat, Fender Rhodes, analogue pings and tambura buzz setting the stage for an echoey guitar narrative;

 “Ticket to Ride” – The Lennon/Beatles’ classic reimagined, as a slow DADGAD-tuned acoustic dirge, with a hint of the Delta Blues;

 “Slaka’s Sambo Sox” – Frenetic stop-time beats a la Al Foster from Miles’s “Agharta” meet a machine drone/mantra and serpentine fuzz guitar from the early Mahavishnu school;

 “She Walks the Burning Stairs” - A big dumb Rammstein drum thunk awakens the finest German machines, which awaken a searing guitar for some Hendrix/Sharrock-shred. What one famous muso and S&M cognoscenti called "the perfect spanking music;"

 “A Girl Like You,” “Wild One” and “Time for Letting Go” – A trio of sparse acoustic originals about difficult loves and life’s sometimes bitter parade, ideal for 3 a.m. headphone listening;

 “A (Somewhat) Future Blues” - An ambient future blues march looking for a movie to sleep with, where Laswell lunches with Devadip-era Santana;

 “NY Expats/Henry Miller Says” – A sonic “hate letter” to the new gentrified New York, complete with honeyed strings, shotguns, gongs and soaring guitar menace, all set to a vintage rant, that still holds true, from one of the original NYC expats, author Henry Miller of Tropic of Cancer fame;

 “The Camel (Went Through Labor Only to Give Birth to a Mouse) -- Titled after a famous Arab proverb, this is a tabla-driven meditation for heavy metal bebop guitar, one that really brings out the Eastern in the artist’s moniker.

 “Nap Dust” – Variations on the beloved Zappa instrumental, “Sleep Dust,” with acoustic and seagull guitars beckoning. Nod music for now people;

Prior to Spaghetti Eastern Music, Cataldi performed and recorded with a host of notables in a number of genres, including the critically-acclaimed Knitting Factory faves The Hari Karaoke Trio of Doom (an industrial/ambient jazz dub extravaganza co-led with drummer D. Hitchcock featuring Eno/Brand X bassist Percy Jones), the avant-jazz/Afro-funk band Collector, Brooklyn’s comedy rockers Frank’s Museum, Lower East Side mainstays The Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players and in the guitar orchestra of pioneering No Wave minimalist Rhys Chatham, on his “A Crimson Grail - Live at Lincoln Center” (Nonesuch Records, 2011).