TUESDAY THE SKY

The Blurred Horizon METAL BLADE

Fates Warning guitarist goes introspective and instrumental.

As guitarist and songwriter with Fates Warning for the last four decades, not to mention his OSI project and numerous other collaborations, Jim Matheos doesn’t need to take any great risks at this point. Not that his new sideproject Tuesday The Sky is a risk in itself: Matheos has dabbled in this instrumental post-rock realm previously on 2014’s Halo Effect. But The Blurred Horizon has evidently transcended its origins in studio tinkering and grown into something more substantial: a necessary outlet for more elegant ideas, and the perfect response to the frustrations of lockdown.

Light years from the ornate bombast of Fates Warning, these are delicate, mysterious pieces, shrouded in ambience and reverb, intermittently assailed by the clatter of electronics and the thunder of Gavin Harrison’s drums, but always centred around Matheos’ sublime playing.

From the film noir drift of Later,

Then Now and the otherworldly dub of Laudanum Dream and a sublime Tim Bowness vocal on Everything Is Free, it’s wonderfully detailed and disorientating. We are a long way from Awaken The Guardian here, and all the more musically enlightened as a result.