Beat Confabulator (All Night on the Floor) by Alec Berlin: Review

by Gabe Finch March 2, 2023

March 2, 2023

Beat Confabulator (All Night on the Floor) by Alec Berlin: Review

The New York City virtuoso guitarist Alec Berlin’s Latest release is his brand-new album Beat Confabulator (All Night on the Floor) released on 16 February 2023. The album has 10 songs with a few tracks that we have previously covered like LaNoise, ROYGBIV, Flatbush Jaywalk, What I Wish I Had Said, Minir Maad, Iota (Not One), Life in the Bog, and Patchen Avenue. He had been slowly releasing these songs as singles building up to the album saving the best for the last. I am talking about the title track of the album, Beat Confabulator (All Night on the Floor).

It would be a huge understatement to say Beat Confabulator being the opener and the title track of the album sets the tone for the rest of the songs and gives the listener a taste of Alec Berlin’s virtuosity and versatility. Let’s take the track as a standalone song and discuss it from that perspective. Alec Berlin starts the song by building up the tension with a hanging tune that dives headfirst into a march of fuzzy rhythm guitars and breaks into a dancy guitar passage. The melodies have a slight jazzy bossa nova edge. This genre-bending song has the bite of fuzz while still being clean in its tone and extremely melodic at the same time. Halfway through, Alec Berlin cranks it up with the overdrive and speeds up the pace, and creates a hypnotic atmosphere all the while going full throttle with the band. His mastery of the melodies and meticulousness in technique and guitar effects never cease to amaze me. You’d have to hear it yourself so why don’t you give this a play? I Promise, you’ll want to listen to the whole album afterward.