Joe Robinson: Time Jumpin' (Universal)

Not being a great watcher of mainstream television means I happily get to miss things like Australia's Got Talent. (I didn't doubt it, the Easybeats, the Church and AC/DC are great.)

But that also means people like me miss someone like 18-year old acoustic guitarist Robinson who won the "play-off" in 2008.

Let it be said immediately this guy isn't like that dance troupe who beat out Susan Boyle. He has a genuine gift and this album is a showcase of exceptional dextrity, but also his sense of a melody which he keeps close to his thinking while pulling out remarkable punctuations of sliding string skidding, filagrees, percussive stutters, bent notes and so on.

Some will doubtless acclaim him as the Hendrix of acoustic but that would just be silly; he's more the Jeff Beck -- if you get the distinction.

And aside from Erroll Garner's Misty (which is given a very fine, sprightly and swinging reading) he wrote everything himself.

I'd have voted for him if I'd ever bothered to watch that programme. Believe me, he's bigger than a televised talent quest, or will be when he doesn't feel he has to showcase any more.