Plini – Voices in The Sky

PLINI — the guy Steve Vai once called “the future of exceptional guitar playing” — discusses the perils of “guitar fame,” the challenges of a modern prog-rocker and his breathtaking new album, Impulse Voices

- By Joe Bosso

Only 10 years after he started posting bits of music online and hoping that somebody — anybody — would give him a click, Australian guitarist Plini is now experiencing the kind of success he never dreamed possible. As both a support act and a headliner, he’s trekked across the globe several times (he was the first instrumental artist to play the U.K.’s Download Festival), and on the strength of his dazzling 2017 debut album, Handmade Cities, he’s been hailed by the likes of Steve Vai as “the future of exceptional guitar playing.” (GuitarWorld.com readers were similarly bowled over, ranking the disc number five in a poll of the “20 Best Guitar Records of the Decade.”)

If anybody needs further convincing that the prog-guitar wunderkind had indeed arrived, it came last fall when hiphop star Doja Cat re-imagined her hit song “Say So” at the MTV Europe Music Awards by utilizing bits of Plini’s song “Handmade Cities” — without the guitarist’s knowledge or permission. Initially, Plini issued a statement, calling the lift “disappointing but not particularly surprising in a sector of the industry that is usually more interested in clout than creativity.”