Sometimes, two forces are less than the sum of their parts. Take this meeting between guitar wizard Billy McLaughlin and ambient composer Soulfood, a.k.a. DJ Free, a.k.a. Gordy Schaeffer. On his own recordings, McLaughlin evinces a whiplash brand of fingerpicking, employing all the two-handed techniques of the post-Michael Hedges acoustic guitarist. Soulfood has created some evocative, ethno-techno-inspired CDs, including Breathe and Wingmakers. But lately, he's become generic, creating albums that are designed to fill a market niche with titles like Tranquility and now Guitar Meditations. Rather than enhancing McLaughlin, who draws in the reigns considerably for some fragile melodies, Soulfood tends to smother him, laying in environmental sounds and pedestrian synth string pads. It's always a relief when said synths drop out, as they do on "Dream Sketcher" and "Drift." It's like someone turning off the air conditioning: suddenly, you can hear the detail of the world around you. Despite McLaughlin's fretwork, Guitar Meditations is trapped in a clichéd marketing concept. --John Diliberto
