Prepare for something wild! Cut To The Bone is, or actually was, a three-piece band formed by UK-based musician and songwriter Donald Dean. His goal was to be able to bring what had started as a solo project to the live setting. With over twenty years of experience as a multi-instrumentalist, skilled in playing the bass, guitar, keys, saxophone, drums, flute, and whatnot, his music is an eclectic mixture of funk, soul, jazz, and Latin with a casual prog rock feel.

“Unrestricted” is the latest offering from Don who simply decided to record everything he’s written for the band. He handled all instruments and vocals and the resulting album is an eclectic mixture of genres, approaches, and sounds. It honestly doesn’t really sound as if it was done by a single person. The music of Cut to the Bone is very generous on instrumentation – the regular guitar, bass, and drums formula is extended by a brass section, various percussion, vocals that carry a strong 1970s and 1980s art rock feel, a plethora of wild and expansive guitar solos and layers of keys. The sound and arrangements of the tracks are often varying, sometimes guitars are distorted and savage, other times they are warm and acoustic. Our only wish is for a more homogeneous production as some of the pieces differ a bit volume-wise.

In general “Unrestricted” absolutely stands to its name in any possible aspect you can think of. Complex music-writing and excellent performance, varying vocal styles, percussion-heavy funk-jazz-soul fusion with a strong UK rock sound. What more do you need? Just cut to the bone and explore this album, there’s a lot of music within it to discover.