Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Listening to music in the comfort of your own home is an enjoyable way to take in the thoughts and words of an artist, the soothe reassurance of what is familiar surrounding new music is tangible and concrete. Some albums though need the experience of being heard whilst you are out in the open, away from the confines of four walls and being urged to take the imagination by the hand and showing it a different way of life, an image to hang the music onto. This way of looking at music works wonderfully well especially when it is a pure and defined set of instrumentals as Mike Chylinski’s new project Arrow Highway.
Some recordings need that space to breathe to really get to grips with, the setting of the British sun on a warm day as you gather your thoughts in a park or on a beach, the emptiness of the B road as you take in the scenery of an untamed land or just on a cliff top as sea birds fly with grace and seemingly little movement overhead will add to what you are hearing and give the memory a stir each time you hear it.
Pulsating and experimental instrumentals have this life blood to them that doesn’t come across in other forms and as is the unique way in which the former Drugstore drummer Mike Chylinski takes on music, Arrow Highway delivers completely a set of scenic musical pictures that is beautifully poised and put together so well that it feels as though it has been stitched together by the best tailors in Saville Row.
With contributions from Simone White, Julian Goldwhite, Chris Camacho, Daron Robinson and Terry de Castro, the music plays with subtle imagery, sound scapes that drift and wallow in the open air and become mischievous and exotic. For Mike Chylinski tracks such as Just Exactly How It Should Go, Nearest Approach, the tantilising Monday in Brixton and America By Car are not just notes brought together over a several year period but are pure escapism, drama and cerebral beauty tied together with a growing promise of a fresh dawn.
Arrow Highway is released on October 1st 2014 via digital release only.