Steve Hackett

★★★ At The Edge Of Light INSIDE OUT. CD/DL/LP

The guitarist’s 26th and most ambitious solo album.

Steve Hackett may still be known as the ex-Genesis guitarist, but there are few audible traces of his former group here. Instead there are shades of metal in the dramatic opener Fallen Walls And Pedestals, tinges of gospel on Underground Railroad, while on Shadow And Flame, Hackett’s long held fascination with Indian music comes into its own in a swooning fusion of east meets west, as his voice and guitar are accompanied by sitar, tabla and Bollywood strings. Orchestra and choir are featured throughout. On Beasts In Our Time, strings give weight to the chords and weave around the band performance, sometimes tracking Hackett’s guitar lines, which are tastefully dazzling throughout. The panoramic Those Golden Wings is full of invention, but the choral lines sometimes stray rather too close to Carmina Burana for comfort, while Descent is essentially a pastiche of Gustav Holst’s Mars.