Despite being in the midst of an indefinite Instagram hiatus, Mateus Asato has been keeping himself rather busy in the musical world. In a bid to maintain his unrivaled neo-soul skills, Asato recently cropped up on Annalé's new single, Goodbye, and dropped a track of his own, titled The Cure.
Now, the electric guitar powerhouse has taken to YouTube to share a quick-fire cover of The Beatles’ In My Life, which he transforms into a dreamy, almost-hypnotic fingerstyle workout.
Wielding a drop-dead gorgeous Mayones Legend T22 six-string, Asato merges McCartney’s vocals and the harmonic underpinnings of George Harrison and John Lennon into one single guitar part – a part that traverses the length of the fretboard and demonstrates his elite feel.
With the pickup selector balanced in the middle position – combining the Lollar Strat Tweed single-coils – Asato is able to harness a punchy-yet-smooth sound, embellished by intermittent shimmies on the guitar’s gold whammy bar.
It begins rather tame, though once the lower-string opening riff and chord-melody verse is out the way, Asato introduces some of his classic flair, decorating the melody with whammy-tinged upper-fret runs, silky scale glides and inversion-based embellishments.
Asato has been particularly active on YouTube in recent times. After releasing The Cure in December 2021 – his first video in 11 months – he subsequently posted a cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah on January 16. With In My Life marking his third release in as many weeks, it looks as though the Asato content train is gaining momentum.
It’s a welcome return for the six-string specialist, who initially announced he was taking a break from Instagram early last year.
In a recent update, though, Asato hinted that he has new music in the pipeline, and that we may see him back on social media “hopefully sooner than we expect”.
“I don't want to be the one who keeps saying, ‘I can't wait to show my new music,’ or, ‘New album coming 2022,’" he said, "but I just want to say that I've been in a good place, happy with most of [the] things I've learned this past year.
“Keeping it up with the essence of 'why I make music' could be hard and it faces brutal vulnerability, especially during these weird season we live [in] now," Asato added. But I feel great after this time off, and I hope my music could transmit that at its purest.
“Thank you so much once again for staying with me in this virtual platform. I will see you soon, hopefully sooner than we expect.”
