Andy Jackson

Interesting that this came out at the same time as Pink Floyd’s ‘Endless River’ – Andy Jackson was Floyd’s engineer - and frankly this album knocks ‘… River’ into a cocked hat.

What makes this album a real triumph is the songwriting which takes his modern Prog into the realms of storyteller without sacrificing the music and creating songs that are memorable without being ‘catchy’.

In Jackson’s own words “The album reflects on the sorting of what is important in life from the humdrum of everyday existence and is, in itself, an analogy for the process of the creation of the album”.

Opener ‘The Boy In The Forest’ has all the hallmarks of a Roger Waters song but without Waters bitterness and he leads the listener into believing the worst before he ends on a high note that makes the song come alive. ‘One More Push’ incorporates a Tuareg trance style with a hard edged rocker that blasts you back in your chair at the break. The closer ‘Brownian Motion’ builds slowly amid swirling guitars and synths.

The pace of the album is studied and steady while he uses changes in the density of the sound together with height and width of the soundscape to punctuate the music and create new musical images – he lulls you into a deep trance, pulling you in to the music and making the mind of the listener an active part of the experience.

This is utterly modern, completely classic and refreshingly familiar. You can hear Floyd all through the album but since he was responsible, in part, for their sound that isn’t a surprise. What is though is the fact that as soon as ‘Brownian Motion’ ebbs away you reach for the start button to do it all over again.