Given the right exposure and marketing this haunting debut album from composer Geoff Smith could easily become something of a cult-seller. Having said that, it's hard to define exactly what musical niche this album falls into. A background influence of the type of minimalism practised by Steve Reich and John Adams is clearly in evidence, though Smith's music has a distinctive jazz and, dare I say it, 'pop' flavour that sets it aside from the general minimalist run of things. The jazz/pop flavour is enhanced, not only by Steve Nye's superb sound production, but also by Smith's sole use of multi-tracked keyboards and Nicola Walker Smith's haunting vocals. Smith's pattering, sequentially shifting keyboard style often reminded me of another difficult-to-categorize composer, Graham Fitkin, though Smith is less abstract in his general compositional approach. Indeed the general impetus for the album, Smith tells us, comes from his song Fifteen Wild Decembers, a setting of words from a fragment by Emily Bronte. ''I felt I had discovered a musical seam which I needed to mine further. This album is the result of a year's work at that seam.''
As a consequence the album certainly has a strong ambient continuity. The remaining four songs, following on from the melancholy mood of the Bronte fragment, are settings of verses by other nineteenth-century English poets (Keats, Shelley and Elizabeth Siddal) whose lives were cut tragically short either by illness or suicide. All are haunting, though The Last of England and the title track are particularly memorable, not least because of Nicola Walker Smith's seductive, velvety vocal style. Interspersed among the song tracks are three instrumental numbers (all multi-tracked keyboard parts played by Smith himself), two of which, Possess Me and To the Old Place, I found strongly reminiscent of Fitkin, whilst the remaining one, The Rainpools Are Happy, is very much Feldmanesque in its gentle, sporadic musings.
Taken as a whole this is a successful first album which should do well, and if you're tempted by it on the strength of this review, you should be able to find it in almost every section of your local record store – jazz, minimalist, pop/rock and new age. As a bonus the CD comes with a second 'CD-single remix' of Six Wings from the main CD – an out-and-out pop-mix replete with synthesized drum track.'