It's not exactly a state secret that Tosin Abasi's guitar-playing talents extend far beyond the technically meticulous prog-metal for which he is best known.
Still though, this decade-old video of Abasi – with the help of Matthew Hemerlein – tackling Radiohead's Paranoid Android on a classical guitar is something to behold.
A Behringer in hand, Abasi puts a classical spin on Thom Yorke's ominous main acoustic riff.
Not content with just rhythm work though, Abasi grabs a pick halfway through for some some nimble lead lines that beautifully re-contextualize Jonny Greenwood's climactic, searing electric guitar solo in the song's middle.
Sadly, the video – which you can check out above – seems to fade out before the duo are finished, but it still captures a terrific cover that has a unique, baroque beauty while staying true to the original's haunting spirit.
In more recent Abasi news, Animals as Leaders returned in September with Monomyth, an intricate, unrelenting epic that served as the group's first new material in five years.
“Monomyth is part fever dream, part ritual. Its imagery represents man's ceaseless attempts to translate transcendent ideas into movement,” Abasi said of the song, a playthrough of which he released in November. “The conflation of struggle with meaning,” he continued. “Pain with significance. The ultimate failure of distilling perceived patterns in the world into knowledge."
