Holdsworth, Allan - Flattire

After suffering a difficult divorce, Allan had sold most of his gear and had no access to a studio. In addition, the house he was now renting wasn’t suitable for recording live guitar or drums, so he decided to take the opportunity to make a record using only the SynthAxe. Of course, he had also sold most of his synthesisers so only had access to certain sounds. The subtitle of this album is “Music for a non-existent movie”, as Allan decided to record music that would fit the scenes that he could imagine in his head. The result is something that is certainly unusual, although it would take a braver man than me to say that it was 100% successful. The problem in many ways is due to the instrumentation being deployed, as it comes across as a synth album yet without the depth that one would normally expect. It is a very stripped sound, yet this approach clashes with the sounds being heard so it doesn’t really work as a synth album, nor as a guitar album (which in fairness it isn’t – although it was recorded by Allan playing a guitar-type instrument, if that makes any sense). Most of the reviews I have read come to the same conclusion as me, in that Allan is one of the most incredible and versatile musicians you will ever come across, but that this is most definitely not the place to start. It’s great that MoonJune have made it available again, especially with Barry Cleveland’s insightful (as always) comments, but this is an album that I played repeatedly as I felt I needed to so that I could write a fair review as opposed to playing it because I loved it. For more details visit www.moonjune.com