HAMISH STUART – SOMEONE ELSE’S CHILD

Hamish Stuart has been a working drummer since the mid-1970s, supporting Marcia Hines, Ian Moss, and Renee Geyer (among others), and collaborating with the likes of The catholics and Jackie Orszaczky. That he’s waited so long to release an album of originals might point to a paucity of ideas, but the evidence here suggests otherwise. Someone Else’s Child is a fully-realised expression of Stuart’s signature style, one that blends understatement, a sense of space, generosity (to his co-musicians and the listener) and regard for texture. On Songlines, he and conga player Aykho Akhrif establish a bed of hypnotic rhythm, over which float wisps of electric guitar,  sparkling flecks of Chris Abraham’s unmistakable piano, and long glorious cymbal washes, serene as manta rays. Sense of Place, with its stark tom-toms, brittle-sounding guitar, and air of uneasy introspection, could almost be an out-take from Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden. See also: the beautiful You Folks, elegiac and spare as a Nina Simone spiritual, and the unearthly sprawl of the title-track, with vocals by Tina Harrod and the late Jackie Orszaczky.
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