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Cartography

Media:
  • Christopher Libertino video
  • Christopher Libertino audio
Album art:
  • Christopher Libertino album art
  • Christopher Libertino album art

Full Album – 2022

Cartography is a boundary-crossing, genre-defying travelogue that pushes Christopher’s guitar playing and technological know-how to the limit. It is a lush, cinematic experience that explores exotic and mysterious terrain. You’ll hear African highlife gene-spliced with Canadian power prog, a gospel choir testifying in an Asian bamboo glade, LA metal moshing with a Scottish pipe band, Dayton funk via the Nile delta and many other strange hybrids.

"Libertino, a multi-instrumentalist with a background in film composition, has created a genre-defying album, spanning styles and continents to create something unique, yet with enough familiar touchstones to make fans of anyone from Steve Morse to Steve Vai feel right at home. He’s a new force in instro rock guitar, expanding the boundaries to encompass wide cinematic soundscapes."

Mark McStea, Guitar World

In 2021, after decades of successful work as a film composer, session guitarist and sideman, Christopher set himself a challenge. He’d realized that his work as a film composer made it too easy to “blend into the background” and allow the film’s images to dominate the proceedings. And while his last solo album, Traveller, received much critical acclaim, he likewise wondered if having lyrics and standard song forms might not also offer too many convenient places to hide.

"Composer Christopher Libertino studied music at Harvard and Berklee, and his fifth album, Cartography, puts him on the map as a writer and player of rare refinement. This music bursts with clever, globalista ideas and seriously high-tech production. Libertino approaches his instrument from the other end of the guitar kaleidoscope where (some dizzyingly flash moments aside) texture and tone trump shred. Fans of Reeves Gabrels, Aziz Ibrahim, and post-Police Andy Summers will totally get him."

Grant Moon, PROG

Christopher decided to kick out these two “crutches” and step fully into the spotlight. His skills as a composer, guitarist and technologist would be fully on display. This time, there would be nowhere to hide.

"If a few more guitarists coaxed sounds like these out of their instruments, the history of rock and roll might have been very different."

Nigel Lord, Music Tech Magazine

Christopher’s distinctive effects based sound has previously been heard on numerous remixes (Gwen Stefani, Roxy Music, Duran Duran), albums (Annie Lennox’s Bare) and film scores (Speak, 28 Days Later, Aeon Flux and Six Feet Under.)

"Christopher Libertino is an electric guitar wizard."

Mikael Carllson, Music from the Movies