Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It is in the delicate nature of the well-performed instrumental that a musician’s worth can be valued. With no lyrics to hide behind, to glean out as the mask of enlightened poetry dishes out verb and sonnet, the musician takes it upon themselves to offer nothing but raw and natural influence over the listener. For by doing so, by offering what some might think of the basics of building block musical material, they instead open the senses of the listener to add their own story into the backdrop of notes and playful, perhaps pied piper led memories.

Music, if played well and with passion is addictive, you cannot help but feel the drive that the musician or group is trying to get across and with the whisper of fortune, the toss of the coin landing on its side in which you were the only one to call the odds, so too does Will Foster in the solo guise of Scatter Factory and the eponymous debut release of music release.

Dispense for a while the notion that a piece of instrumental music cannot be as good or as entertaining as a full blown track with lyrics that worm around inside your head. When a slice of music is good enough to capture the imagination and make you think of your own lyrics, the story you wish to place in tandem with the beautiful sound you are witnessing, then it must, in truth, be good enough to hold.

In tracks such as Out of The Blocks, the devastatingly simple but highly creative Spartan Missile, Plains Awash and the faultless end in Mea Culpa, Scatter Factory fights and stays on course to illuminate the way forward. It is surely to be seen as a great piece of music, of the achievement of pressing against convention.

Scatter Factory is an album of ambient dreams and images made tangible and physical, each track seamless and full of possibilities; a credit to the musician’s lust for perception in a murky world.

Ian D. Hall