Chris Abrahams

| Fluid To The Influence | Room40 RM464

On One-Liter Cold Laptop Chris Abrahams has sounds spearing at you with such venom as might be the soundtrack to the apocalypse. The Necks’ pianist doesn’t leave you cowering for long, however, with Scale Upon the Land an almost Arcadian vision of serenity realised with piano and electronics, carrying faint echoes of Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way. Thereafter the dialogue between piano, organ and electronics develops and evolves, as does that between light and dark, with each piece distinctive in its textural character. At the heart of Abrahams’ music is a concept of beauty implicitly layered with disquiet, like a Giorgio de Chirico canvas, and sometimes this foreboding is actually justified by a sonic shock, an effect akin to being blasted awake from a euphoric dream by the sound of the telephone ringing.