James Norbert Ivanyi is about to release his tenth album of instrumental music. After dabbling in keyboard-heavy and acoustic guitar albums, The Phantasm Cozenage is a return to heavy progressive rock and metal. The album is being promoted with a guitar giveway that’s turning out to be more challenging for Ivanyi than creating new music. We caught up with him to learn more.

I just checked out your new single. It’s something to look forward to, if the rest of the album is anything like that.

Thank you, man. I massively appreciate that. I’m excited to share it this afternoon and that’s definitely a good indication of what’s in store for the rest of the album.

Do you have the same musicians on it across the album or have you spread the love around?

The fun fact is I did everything on the album. I did all the instruments, so I did all keys, all the bass, all the drum programming and obviously mixed and mastered the album, as well. I do have a live band that I work with, and those are the guys who feature in the video clip.

You’ve worked with those guys before – you were in a band with the bass player before, but also Liam Weedall is a pretty awesome drummer and a very busy guy.

As any gifted metal drummer is! They’re in 10,000 bands all at once.

So you’ll be out doing shows once the album is released?

Yes, I’m going to. I’m looking at doing some touring early in the new year. I was going to do some stuff this year, but things got derailed, then there was all the spooks because apparently there was going to be no petrol, and whatever was happening. So I’m a bit busy producing and mixing some records – not my stuff, but some clients I work with. But in the new year, once NAMM time is out of the way, which is kind of a thing I’m committed to doing, I’m definitely going to look at doing some Aussie tour dates, and some more. The last time I toured here was 2023, I think, so it’s been a few years. So it’s time. I definitely will be doing some shows, yes.

That’s good to know. Now, you’ve got a pretty unique way of promoting this album. Some artists do giveaways, but you’re giving away guitars!

I’m as shocked as everyone else is that I went along with this crazy plan of mine! So I am doing a solo comp, which is a thing that I got into myself back in the day, and I think it’s a really cool thing for the guitar community to get involved with. We’re doing a comp where I’ve written a track, and I have the impossible task of picking one lucky winner. They will win my brand new signature guitar which will be sent out at the NAMM show in January next year. The first production run it going to be in October this year, so one lucky person out there gets to pick which guitar they can win, which is crazy, even to me.

What are you looking for, then? Have you given yourself some cheat sheets or something so you know what you’re after? There’s going to be a lot of people out there who think they’re hot enough for this, so what are you looking for when someone presents this. How will you choose the winner?

That’s the million dollar question! I’m hideously unprepared, and so many entries have been coming in. I’ve already got, like, ten that I think are the best ones. So what I’m going to do when the entries finish on the 19th, which is the day the album comes out, I’ll then spend a week scraping the internet, going over every single one, listening to them all again… I’m not looking for the most technical one, I’m not looking for the most shreddy one, I don’t care if you’ve filmed it on a potato or you’ve set up a Jerry Bruckheimer rig. It doesn’t really matter. None of those things are what I’m looking for. I think what I’m looking for is something that speaks to me musically as being my favourite. It could be something simple or it could be something technical and flashy. I’m trying not to overthink it until I get to that place where I can look at all of them, and really see what everyone’s done. They’re all wildly different from each other. Everyone has such a different take on it. It’s definitely not a case of, This guy played the best. I guess what I’m looking for is, who did the best music with it? It’s going to be an impossible task, for sure because, as I’ve said, I’ve already seen a bunch that were just really good. That’s what I’m going to be looking for: which one speaks to me, musically, the most.

Knowing as much about guitars as I do, which is that they are a stringed instrument and other people are good at playing them, how do you go about getting an endorsement that leads to a signature instrument? How do you go about being able to design a guitar and have it produced?

To deal with the first bit of that question, it came about because back in my band days, I was playing this particular brand of guitars – Suhr Guitars, a small, boutique, super high-end custom manufacturer based out of California. They contacted me online in the early YouTube days, because I was putting a bunch of videos. I think it was the case that they didn’t have a lot of artists doing what I was doing in the kind of heavier progressive metal or rock space. They found out I was coming to the US and invited me to the workshop. That was back in 2012 or 13 and we’ve been working together ever since, and they’ve been nothing but really supportive of all the highly niche and strange musical choices I’ve made. It was maybe five or six years ago that the conversation came up that they would like to build me a signature guitar. It was a really big honour, and I remember being a kid and looking at the guitar mags and guys with their signature guitars, and how cool it was. It was certainly something that I didn’t think was on the cards. It’s a huge honour. We’ve got three models out now, and I’m still very much in the honeymoon phase with it. I pick it up and it’s like the perfect guitar, which I’ve never experienced before. It’s really, really cool and the new models are just fantastic and the new models were received really well. It’s been a really cool experience.

I guess the next really cool experience for you is going to be letting people hear this album. You’ve been doing this for quite a while now. It’s been a long process.

I’ve been working on it for about three years, I would say. I’ve been working at it pretty consistently, but I’ve had a few breaks. I had a busy year and a bit doing clinic tours all over the world promoting the signature guitar, the previous one. So across a lot of 2025 I was in China, I was in Japan, the US twice. Finished it off in Thailand. So I did have some breaks, but it’s been three years of solid work and in a way it’s been my return to electric guitar. Before that I kind of deviated out of COVID into doing different kinds of things I’d always wanted to. I did a keyboard record and an acoustic guitar album. In a way this was my way of putting my toe back in the water of making a full-on guitar album again. I love it. I had a lot more fun with it and I felt a lot more relaxed making it than with other things I’ve done. I wasn’t really fussing over everything. I just went with the flow and really had fun with it, so I hope that shows in the music.

It must be interesting and exciting for you to be able to travel to places that many people probably don’t get a chance to visit. China is an experience in itself, because I’ve been there, but not as a musician, teaching and demonstrating things to people. It must be incredible to be able to do that.

It’s a trip! It’s so cool. I didn’t have any other reason to go there, and I never thought I’d go there to play guitar. All those things are opportunities that I’m super grateful for. China was amazing. I don’t think I really knew what to expect. First of all I was just so impressed with how incredibly impressive a place it is. Obviously – I don’t know about you, but I don’t hear a lot about the Chinese guitar scene, so it was so cool to see that it was there and it was thriving. All the guys I connected with… I’d ask them, ‘How do you know about these things? Don’t you all not have the internet?’ And they’re all like, ‘We’ve all got VPNs!’ So they were really into the scene and really engaged with it. Doing the clinics, I got to meet a lot of the young generation who are into it, and visit some guitar stores where I was doing some performances. So it was super cool, and it has been a really interesting experience. We also did the clinics in Japan – obviously you know their guitar scene is crazy. They are way into it, so that was really cool. It was almost my first time going to Japan, so that was a double win. I’ve been to the US dozens of times now, that’s always a treat. We finished the last one in October last year. Feels like two minutes ago, but it’s almost October again now! So it’s really good to be able to travel and connect with people who want to see me play. It’s more of a social event, too, the clinic environment. It’s never lost on me, either, because I make such niche music fo...

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