Imperial

Robin Guthrie's gauzy production flourishes and reverbed washes of guitar are certainly familiar to fans of Cocteau Twins, and followers of Guthrie's later career are familiar with the spectral, down-tempo vibe of Violet Indiana. The sonic hallmarks of both bands are evident on IMPERIAL, Guthrie's first solo release. Entirely instrumental, IMPERIAL draws on Cocteau Twins' dream pop and the dark, noir-ish angles of Violet Indiana, while casting the whole in the mold of contemporary ambient. The electronic pulses of "Tera," for example, and the delicate piano line of "Elemental" sound like the distant cousins of Autechre and Brian Eno, respectively. It is easy to forget that Guthrie is a pioneer in his own right, however, and that many of the lush, liquid atmospherics heard in '80s and '90s alternative rock (including shoegazer, slow-core, and certain post-rock/ambient offshoots) are traceable to him. Guthrie continues to develop on songs like the space Western "Thunderbird Road," and the warm, weightless keyboard-based "Freefall." This is beautiful, evocative music that should appeal to fans of classic 4AD material, as well as ambient music.|

The most casual Cocteau Twins fan could tell especially from records like Victorialand and The Moon and the Melodies that if Robin Guthrie ever made an album of solo instrumentals, it would most likely fall somewhere between the Durutti Column (the master of the ghostly and the shimmery) and Angelo Badalamenti (the master of the eerie and the ominous). That is exactly where Imperial -- surprisingly, his first solo album after two decades-plus as a musician and producer -- falls. The drip-hop records Guthrie put under his belt with Siobhan de Mare as Violet Indiana prior to this saw him taking a relatively skeletal approach to his guitar. It's not that his actual playing was much different. The difference was more in the way he treated his playing -- it was in his lack of treatments. What once throbbed and echoed endlessly was stated more plaintively. On Imperial, Guthrie again bathes everything in cheesecloth. His familiar use of reverb, echo, and who knows what other effects means that determining where a note begins and ends is just as easy as it was in the average Cocteau Twins song. The majority of the pieces could fool many a Guthrie fanatic as outtakes from the albums mentioned above -- the weightless drones and light filigrees are as mesmerizing and familiar as ever when folded into each other. "Freefall," with a simple piano pattern underpinned by soft keyboard tones, is the closest anyone has come to making an alternate Twin Peaks theme; the title could hint that it was the artist's intention to do exactly that. He breaks from the routine just enough to give the album a number of dimensions; a couple moments are relatively violent amidst Southwestern dirt-and-tumbleweed desolation, while others use discreet drum programming like latter-day Cocteaus. Surely a bright future awaits beyond this debut. ~ Andy Kellman