STEPHEN W TAYLER

Da Capo BURNING SHED

Legendary studio engineer aims high with instrumental suite.

Having worked with everyone from Kate Bush and Rush to Suzanne Vega and Tina Turner over his five-decade career, sound engineer and mixing maestro Stephen W Tayler has surely earned the right to put his feet up. Instead, he’s found time to create this “ambitious instrumental suite”, which he initially performed live at his regular base, Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in Bath, in 2019. Now Da Capo has made it onto physical format, and although the accompanying DVD of visuals wasn’t available at the time of going to press, the music is certainly evocative enough to create its own imagery in the listener’s mind. The propulsive piano chimes of the title track and Four Ways To Fiveways cruise through your head like you’re watching scenery sweep past from a window seat on a coastal train, and then Coda Capo follows the latter piece like James Bond in a souped-up sports car, an absorbing techno-driven throb. Elsewhere the mood is much more meditative, though, as in the melancholic piano musings and distant bells of Sunday 5.44pm or the ambient dreamscapes of The Forgetting Curve and Time Stood Still. Close your eyes, tune in and zone out.