Born and bred in the classical tradition, what MacAlpine had inherited from his classical training is not only the day-to-day discipline and rigour of purpose. The classical world has given him something far more important, what was later to become the key part of his method, something that he calls an ability to think in concepts.

Conceptual approach to composition and an ability to embrace diverse musical notions—ranging from metal to jazz—under one creative model, is something that can be partially explained by MacAlpine's classical background, but in equal measure by his innate gift for thinking in big, bold ideas. Both certainly have something to do with the way he has always been able to unify dissimilar genres without becoming preoccupied with trivialities, either in his work or in his career choices that never tied him down to one group of musicians. This attitude in the long run has given MacAlpine the ultimate creative satisfaction. His search for new contexts and new forms for his music led him to collaborations with an impressive array of stellar, equally conceptually-minded names that over the years have ranged from Steve Vai to Billy Sheehan. And it was together with Sheehan and drummer Virgil Donati that MacAlpine had formed Devil's Slingshot in 2007, an all-star trio whose debut album CLINOPHOBIA was released that same year.

CLINOPHOBIA presents an audacious juxtaposition of thumping, tightly-wound heavy riffs and unpretentiously graceful, almost pop-like melodies that blossom into guitar solos of intricate, nuanced intensity. Powerhouse rock riffs married to effect-laden floating melodies is, of course, something that Satch has turned into a staple over a decade ago, but through the prism of MacAlpine's vision this modus operandi acquires a deeper meaning. The complexity of gradations between the familiar and the unique is what strikes you first about CLINOPHOBIA. And then, of course, the guitar solos span such a stunning range from the vacuous to the sublime, the album soon becomes nothing but a challenge to all stereotypes of the genre, if not to stereotypes of originality. Every tune on the record begins with posing a rock standard only to find new, unexpected ways to depart from it. This tension between affirmation and denial, expectation and fulfillment, the original and the banal is played out with such depth and complexity that you soon end up comparing this record to all those similar in spirit, the ones where musicians of awe-inspiring ability looked inside themselves to convey complicated truths – from Frank Zappa to the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

But then you realise that this is what was bound to happen should these musicians get together to record an album. The plane on which Sheehan operates these days has long gone beyond the orthodox or the traditional, and Donati is the kind of drummer who can work within any given paradigm on pure instinct. So it's no surprise that Sheehan's phenomenal chops and Donati's inspired drumming become the integral parts of the album on par with the guitar leads, each player going beyond the pure support function or pure technique. And this is exactly what turns this record into a kind of work that can be listened to again and again, leaving you to discover new layers of meaning each time around.

Our interview put it to MacAlpine that CLINOPHOBIA has gone far beyond stylistic distinctions, beyond what they call rock, or jazz-rock, or metal, and he seconds this observation. "We never really wanted to restrict ourselves to one genre," he says. "I am not concerned with styles. If it's good, it will be recorded."

Despite the conceptual approach, attention to detail becomes clear straight from the opener, "Nederland", where the provocatively short eerie guitar solo touched with a hint of the ‘80s prog rock shimmers with such intricacy that you wonder how MacAlpine manages to avoid turning it into a pure showcase of his formidable technique. But then you remember that here is one player who has never been interested in technique for the sake of it, despite being one of the most impressive chopsmen of our time.

Asked if his technique requires everyday practice, MacAlpine says that his busy schedule makes sure he is constantly playing. "I play a lot of piano," he says, "I'm playing all the time in different bands. I play jazz. I'm writing all the time and I'm working with different musicians in my studio. So I'm constantly playing, it's not like I'm sitting at home playing scales and stuff like that, really. But for the most part my technique has always been a tool and a reference for a frame of mind, something that I've learnt very young. I started piano at five so it's just an understanding to be able to have building blocks so that you don't need to be constantly going backwards to re-establish that. It's important really to spend some time with your instruments at some point in a day, but definitely not eight hours a day because I don't have that kind of time to do that anymore."

As our conversation continues, I learn three crucial things about CLINOPHOBIA: the album was written in three months, MacAlpine is very pleased with the way the record has turned out, and all solos were improvised. The last admission is quite stunning, as his leads are so finely wrought, transparent and detail-rich that they sound carefully thought through, almost pre-written, conveying the distilled essence of his technique and a clear statement of where he found himself creatively and emotionally at the time when the album was recorded.

I ask if his approach to writing music is more intellectual or impulsive, and I'm not surprised when MacAlpine tells me it's the former. He adds that a new record he is now working on with a yet-to-be-named vocalist will be a good testimony to this approach. The new project, however, is under wraps at the moment, but he says that a lot of work has already been done, and it will be out soon, hopefully a subject for another interview. Is working with a vocalist much different from writing an instrumental album? MacAlpine doesn't think that the fundamental approach is that different, but admits that when working with a vocalist, restrictions like their range should be taken into consideration.

MacAlpine's gift for uniting such a variety of influences, styles and genres as on CLINOPHOBIA must have something to do with his classical training and the ability to think big that it helped him develop. So it comes as no surprise when he confirms that while writing CLINOPHOBIA the trio did begin with a concept. "From the start the emphasis was going to be on rhythmic structures," he explains. The best illustration to this is "Flamed", a densely textured futuristic track of stunning rhythmic complexity showcasing Donati's restrained clockwork virtuosity better than any other track on the album. A protean rhythmic groove floats MacAlpine’s guitar extrapolations perfectly, and the interplay between the guitar leads and the shape-shifting rhythm section goes beyond textures and rhythms of rock arriving at the final effect of tension relayed with breathtaking dexterity.

With a lot on CLINOPHOBIA being about rhythm, a lot of it is also about melody. I wonder if MacAlpine has drawn on his classical background here too, or if he has now reached a point where all this training and experience in different genres has merged into one pool of musical knowledge. He says that while some skills and experiences are interchangeable, classical training helps, first of all, to conceptualise. And while it also helps to reach the stage where a musician becomes free to explore without much planning, he still draws a clear line between classical music and rock, or classical music and jazz. "Classical music does affect the way I approach composition," he says, "but not so much my approach to guitar."

Remembering Crusher's recent conversation with another multi-genre great, Chris Poland, and his remark that he feels he would have been ten times the player he is now if he could read music, I ask MacAlpine about the importance of this skill. His reply is that this skill gives a musician instant access to a whole strata of music from all periods and localities without having to hear it. He says that a lot of people don't have time to learn how to read, but it is never too late to and it isn't that difficult. "If you think it's going to assist you in your creative endeavour, it doesn't take that long to learn," he says. "Not that the playing of someone like Chris Poland actually suffers from it," he adds.

Asked how he sees the instrumental guitar genre developing in the future, MacAlpine doesn't deny that changes will happen, but as to the directions they will take, he says he's unsure. "I don't know," he admits. "People often ask me that and I can't really tell. I don't think it's going to be one direction that things will develop in." He agrees that recently there has been a lot more interaction between different genres, involving even classical music, and he says he hopes that whatever changes will take place, there is going to be a lot of human feeling to it. "There is also a resurgence of interest in actual playing, as opposed to sampling and using machines to make music," he adds.

On the one hand, when asked about his take on the changes currently taking place in the music industry, he admits that the new downloading technology's emphasis on downloading singles puzzles him as he thinks that fans want to hear albums, not singles. And he says he notices another tendency that free downloading has brought about: the need to tour without having released an album. "People can be on tour perpetually without releasing an album for years," he says.

Then it's time for the customary goofy question. What would he write to his younger self if given an opportunity to send a letter that would travel back in time? MacAlpine is confused for just a fraction of a second before he starts thinking back to the time when he was studying under his music teacher. "If I had a chance to talk with a music teacher that I worked with very much in the beginning," he says, "what my teacher said was that a lot of players when they become professional, they really no longer have fun playing anymore. Music has become such a business with travelling, commitments, disappointments, and whatever it is that becomes the prevalent factor. Your emotions are dictated; you lose the joy of playing. And I think it's really important never to abandon that and never to lose that. It's really important to remember that it is music and you’ve somehow been lucky enough to make a living out of doing what other people use as a hobby. There is a fun factor to it and that fun factor cannot be forgotten. I think that that's what I would reiterate."