Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The seemingly quiet ones are always the ones that seem to hide the biggest uproariously delicious sound within them. Like a star raging away in the Universe, from a safe distance what you witness is the serenity of cosmic forces going about its business, atoms colliding causing life to function and yet go to a fixed point and the heart-beat of the Solar System is heard in all its furious intensity. Listening to David Jimenez-Hughes’ A Point In Time is very much like witnessing that star burning up its life force and radiating its warmth but without the huge terrifying Galaxy ending boom at the end.
What David Jimenez-Hughes brings to the stereo is something that just sits serenely in the mind; it burns with beautiful imagery and instrumental similes waiting to be added. A poet armed with just a guitar and a set of strings in which the sound of the beating heart gets louder, more tempestuous and with a controlled, passionate stormy embrace the longer the E.P. progresses.
The Newcastle-Under-Lyme based musician carries that stormy embrace into battle, into the heart of the Sun’s dying embers and produces a set of instrumental songs that glide somewhere between wonderfully crafted and modest through to throttle set to maximum, the throttle finally only releasing when every particle of emotion has been wrung out and left to be drained. Throughout it though is one constant factor, no matter the track, no matter the imagery; the E.P. is unpretentious but sublimely cool.
From the opening track of Catchem’s Corner with its off-beat whimsicality feel through tracks such as Transition, Promise, Reason and the title track of A Point In Time, each song captures the majesty of the instrumental and offers the potential for the listener to add their own flavour of poetry to the active proceedings. Like all good Instrumental pieces the musician is showing you the way but only as a guide, they are not leading, they aren’t even in control, what they do is offer you a path in which to go down with your thoughts but understands if the route you take isn’t the one that they thought of. For that you have to gladly take the hand of David Jimenez-Hughes and follow his notes, take a look around and then take the walk in which takes the spirit further.
A Point In Time is a great treat of instrumental brilliance.
Ian D. Hall