Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
The instrumental album is one that in many ways can carry more weight with the listener than any other particular style on offer; perhaps in part due to the musician or band allowing the freedom of thought to really take hold and flourish, permitted with grace to soar higher than those albums stuck rigid in their lyrical excellence.
The instrumental album accepts that the listener will impose their own lyrics somewhere in between the notes and will change them, refine them, alter them depending on the mood and above all know that it is only possible due to the liberty that non verbal communication offers as self determined openness. It is that liberty that Paul Tasker in his album Cold Weather Music excels and offers serious musical bounty to stretch the mind within.
Music for cold weather it might be labelled but the heat of performance is such that there are moments when the feeling of true escape, of solitary exploration in the jungle of cords and the truth of free will is explored with so much potential that the vastness of entire continents is to be felt at the finger tips, pulsing away and feeding the listener with the words, touch me, allow the music to infect and cajole the spirits;. It is a feeling of intense pleasure that grafts away with subtle beauty, of innocence and pleasure, the virtue of the first kiss with a future and tender lover.
Joined by Jo Shaw, Corran Macarthur, Thomas Marsden and Lugi Pasquini, Paul Tasker takes the listener on a journey of exploration in which they are allowed to fill in most of the map; the musician’s assuredness guiding them to be imaginative and incorruptible. Not a case of here be monsters dotted around in angry warning but instead one that points the way through memories of shaded forests and the breath of air that refreshes beyond doubt.
In songs such as Sky Train, the superb Blossoms in the Autumn, Ne’er Day and Tundra Plane, Paul Tasker fills the skyline with dynamic purity and simple direction.
An album of absolute art, the freedom of imagination offered with style, Cold Weather Music is a true must listen, allow yourself to be taken where you want to be.
Ian D. Hall