Making a choice among artists who create ambient music veering into modern classical is becoming harder by the day. It is becoming hard sifting through hours of music and finding the ones that don’t end up into a musical wallpaper territory, the ones that keep up in both quality and emotional intensity.
That list is quite rarified these days, but you can easily add Southend-on-Sea visual artist and musician Adrian Lane and his latest album Their Ghosts and Ours to it. Lane, who has been releasing music since 2013 on various independent labels, is among those who combine acoustic sources with electronic/computer-generated embellishments, something that has been done a lot these days.
Yet, to make such music work, you not only have to strike a delicate balance between the acoustic and electronic sources, but make meaningful, substantive compositions. something that requires not only a detailed knowledge of your sources but a hefty dose of inventiveness to make your music work.
It seems that Lane had quite an inventive touch when he prepared this album. He notes: “At the beginning of working on this album, I had an idea of the feel that I wanted to achieve, but no clear direction. I had a piece which I was experimenting with that captured that feel and sent it to poet, Neil McRoberts, to get his thoughts.”
The approach obviously worked, as Lane was able to get great feedback from McRoberts, turning it into a set of 12 delicate, quite touching compositions that work on every musical level.
