FOLLOW THE SUN REVIEW BY RJ LANNAN
Follow the Sun, the newest release from guitarist David Lindsay is to say the least, a most pensive recording. Throughout the music I felt a sense of not aloneness, but solitude. With very little accompaniment, save a lyricon played by Premik Russell Tubbs, and some spare programming by Gary Honess, the twelve track instrumental album focuses on a hidden depth of emotions produced by David’s various guitars in some less than intricate, organic compositions. In this case, less does mean more.
Follow the Sun, the opening number offers a boundless expanse for our spirits to explore. Lindsay’s doleful, yet introspective guitar composition is musically aimless, yet we are pulled into our own thoughts. Like a day in winter, the sun travels without warmth through the sky, but there is always hope in the form of light. David’s music is that light.
Open Air features the wistful voice of Tubb’s wind synthesizer although the lyricon seems a more romantic name for his complex instrument. Lindsay’s sad, beautiful arrangement conjures up the enigmatic Russian word “toska”. It applies here as a mysterious quality or entity that pressures the soul into yearning for something that is completely unknown.
The Pleiades offers its own kind of starry radiance by the use of bright phrasing and a gentle flow of notes. The Seven Sisters cling to their refuge in the night sky giving humankind romance and myth. David’s ethereal rendition is slow and soothing with sporadic notes that offer an ambience of intangibility, while the elusive main theme remains contemplative.
Glass Soul is deliberate, but delicate. Again, Lindsay depends on the sparseness of notation, a gentle hand, and a few strummed chords to fill his diaphanous theme. The tune seems to convey the fragility of the human psyche while slow dancing around it. Yes we are touchable, but we are also breakable.