Fret Chat: Plini

“At Pickup Music, we our community questions like: Who are you listening to? Who’s your favorite guitarist? What was the last show you went to?” said Sam Blakelock, cofounder of Pickup, “and I just kept hearing about Plini from our community.”

Plini is a guitarist and composer from Sydney, Australia who’s made waves in the prog metal scene. The first thing you notice about Plini is that he’s a modest man of few words and prefers to let his music do the talking.

His musical journey began at a young age when his mom introduced him to the Beatles, “I wanted to be Ringo so I set up pots and pans and hit them,” he said in an interview with Jude Gold of Guitar Player magazine, “I think by being really annoying I eventually got a drum set.”

Plini’s dad is a jazz bassist but didn’t teach him much growing up. Rather, he encouraged Plini to listen to music that caught his ear and figure it out on his own– advice that Plini thinks has helped him more than if his dad would have formally trained him.

Plini went on to teach himself guitar. However, when you watch him play, you’d think that he’s been studying music theory at the university level. He records on his own humble, bedroom recording rig and has independently released one album, three EP’s, and a handful of singles.

He performs and releases music as Plini, which is essentially a solo project brought to life by a group of talented musicians who help him execute his vision. Recently, he has played over 100 shows in support of prog metal giants Animals as Leaders on their 2016 tour– he opened as Plini and stepped in as a touring member of the Canadian prog metal band Intervals who were also on the bill.