KOMIE

LA-based soundtrack maestro turns guitar hero.

Komie is one of those gifted people who has probably slipped under your radar. A winner of several Emmys, he’s created music for Ozzy Osbourne, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Coca-Cola, NASCAR and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, to name but a few. This is a man who has kept in the background, producing soundtrack and incidental music. Well, no more. Afterglow is Komie’s coming-out party, and brings his guitar virtuosity – by turns meditative, by turns searing – centre stage. A rather beautiful thing it is too. By combining elements of postrock and New Age chill-out, Afterglow supplies a soundtrack to lose yourself in. Tracks such as Driftwood and Breathe In You take the listener off on aural dream rivers, and Komie’s echoey, delayed guitar is spacey and gritty. But there are also poppier grooves such as Power Surge, and tense postindustrial soundtracks like Inhumanly Possible. There are a lot of guitar virtuosos, and Komie’s desire to keep his technique subservient to the needs of the song won’t be to everyone’s taste. His effortless runs and dives, however, are arguably an object lesson to the ill-disciplined wig-out boys letting rip over less distinguished efforts.