Album Review: Steve Vai "The Ultra Zone"(2003)

I have owned this album for some weeks now and I am waiting to get tired of it. Truth is I can't.

Steve Vai 's latest studio album is still in the works. I got a hold of his live album DVD "Live at the Astoria" a month ago. I can't get enough of this guy. His music sounds like it comes from another visceral plain, a totally different universe.
When I was still 13, my standard for good music was if it sounded like the theme songs of the cartoons I was watching. Whenever I listened to Steve Vai, It somehow reminded me of robots and spaceships, aliens and warships. I used to do very well doing his songs with air guitar (with my left hand too, mind you), but when I finally learned how to play, Iwas frustrated that I couldn't do his "simple stuff".

The album is a more culturally diverse mix of melodies and rhythms. "Blood and Tears" has a dominant hindu flavor all throughout. "Ultra Zone" is african, "Asian Sky" which is Vai turned J-pop, sounds like either an airline commercial or the theme song for Dragonball.
Vai described the name "Ultra Zone" as being the musician's state of mind where everything he plays is perfect and cannot make a mistake. Michael Jordan expressed the same idea when playing basketball. Any which way, it is easily understood.