A Crude Mechanical: Discourse (Public Witness/digital outlets)

Now this is interesting: the solo, multi-tracked guitar, instrumental debut by Shane Warbrooke which is billed as “experimental”.

But that's a word which will have some hiding under the bedsheets.

So let's quickly sidestep that – and his “accumulated noise” description – to pin down a couple of more appealing and appeasing touchstones: Phil Manzanera (of Roxy Music), Steve Hillage (albums under his own name) and even the lightest nudge from krautrock-influenced Seventies prog (on the piece I Have Become Discourse).

So this is an album of melodic music more than accumulated noise and much of it, like the seven minute Another Destroyers of Words and the follow-up And Now The Artifice Is The Art is dialed right down: the former opening into a lovely shimmer of distant guitar over a cleverly shifting rhythmic beat (before a surging second half); the latter a glorious prog epic with Middle Eastern hints in its six minutes.

And We Bleed Metrics has a hypnotic, repeated figure and there's a bit of six string showmanship on The Choir Bays in Binary.

So despite that “experimental” description this isn't ear-damaging Sonic Youth-like squall or something akin to free jazz on meth.

A Crude Mechanical/Warbrooke has created an interesting calling card and pieces like All We Need Is sound like music for a film or television production.

You can apparently read the album title and song titles in a sequence to create a meaningful sentence or two, but their greater purpose eluded me.

The music didn't however.

.

You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here. It also comes in a vinyl edition.