Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

History is such that it not only repeats itself, it has a beautiful and recurring habit of repeating itself till it becomes a cause for celebration and rememberance. History is never dead, unlike many subjects one may be taught at school, history is full of possibilities, the what if scenario much beloved of the anarchic thoughtful student, the plotting of random, separate events to a juncture where they meet, explode and ricochet into a thousand strands; history breathes, history lives and is the mother of all our futures. No matter what you cannot find yourself truly Alone With History.

To revel in the reflection and solitude that History provides is to is at least understand, to know that you can never truly know everything, it is the one subject that allows for the subjective to play into the hands of the thinker and in Alistair Savage’s Alone With History, the sound of the instrumental and the cool slow beat tinged with explosive groove, history lives in the music of the past, in the art of the future and across the entire composition of work highlighted, it remembers, the aural history, the sound of the past never wavers.

Recorded partly live and with the sense of accomplishment forever hanging in the air, Alistair Savage takes the traditional and the blessed down the route of re-imagination, of taking life as a standing point and making sure the echoes are forever heard, past the days of ignorance and through to the point where music, in all its shapes and forms, are celebrated and discussed.

The music on the album is spirited, full of flavour and temptation; it warrants all the investigation power that an interested and intrigued person can cope with. It is a salute to the powers of musical observation, the sparking of imaginative coils in the brain and the wonder of where the music will reach its crescendo and conclusion.

In the tracks Ae Fond Kiss and My Love Is Like A Red Red Rose, taken from the section titled Dear Poet, the abundance of fruitful exploration that is tied up in The Gow Family Tree and the exquisite lengthy opener of Scenes From Gow, Alistair Savage weaves a tale of drama and absorbing memory; it is an thoroughbred of an album, one that captivates from the absolute beginning and never tails off course.

Alistair Savage commands attention with this album, one of solo introspection and one that makes history a malleable and playful entity to be respected.

Ian D. Hall