Scissor & Thread label founder Francis Harris returns with his sophomore album, Minutes Of Sleep.
Like its predecessor, 2012's Leland, the record deals with complex topics such as memory, loss and profound grief. Leland was written whilst the producer was dealing with the death of his father and now Minutes Of Sleep comes as a tribute to his mother who died a year later. The depth and complexities of feelings brought about by that experience are conveyed and matched in the music itself.
Stripping away the drum-led narrative of his work as Adultnapper, Harris employs forlorn trumpets, heart-breaking piano motifs, brooding cello parts and sorrowful guitars to construct his own vision of this most personal of emotions.
He manages to attach these parts of live instrumentation to his own long-standing interest in House music deft production techniques to create a sound very much of his own. It blends the organic, natural and live with the synthetic, electric and engineered. That keeps the album structured whilst allowing the kind of expression that tells such a meaningful story with dignified truth and emotional depth.
It is an exceptionally personal record but one where the quality of the music itself never suffers at the hands of the conceptual idea behind the album as a whole. This is a true listening experience.
4 out of 5
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