The Sound of One – Andy Garbi (Adventures in Sound)
The debut solo album from this Birmingham Conservatoire graduate composer is described as being ‘cross-genre ambient-classical filmic landscape music’. Which just goes to show what a prat one can sound when trying to describe music (you just wait till I’ve finished here!) However, I can but admire Garbi’s stance: one that successfully straddles genres, gaining kudos whilst retaining integrity. Though I suspect his obvious passion to create new, real, interesting, effective music gives scant regard to genre-crossing when in creative process.

‘Haunting’ is the first word that springs effortlessly from the Reviewers’ Lexicon of Clichés, but by track 6 the sombre reflectiveness of earlier moods seems to be wandering lost behind the stage of public accessibility, embroiled in someone else’s stark but cloying and softly padded depression. With track 7 ‘haunting’ has become ‘haunted’. This music perfectly reflects a facet of our modern western psyche: one where wrists may contemplate the dark side of razors.

)However, this is a remarkable album that I would recommend if you are happy in the shade. It moves with much deeply felt sensitivity and beauty: with echoes of Samuel Barber’s famous Adagio (used in Platoon), and Debussy‘s Des Pas sur la Neige, plus Brian Eno’s old school ambient. ‘Yearning’ – there’s another one. And ‘sincere’ – there’s another.

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