Malcolm Galloway, one half of the staggeringly good British prog outfit, Hats Off Gentlemen, It’s Adequate, releases the latest album in his series of classical/minimalist/post-minimalist/electronic/instrumental albums, Stare, on August 11th, and you can obtain this on the relevant Bandcamp page at https://malcolmgalloway.bandcamp.com/album/stare
Galloway presents us with six regular tracks, plus a couple of bonuses. Other than the solo guitar part for Ostinato, the other sounds are produced entirely in silico (defined as produced by means of computer modelling or computer simulation).
The lead track, Under Countless Stars, can only be described as a monumental suite of music, lasting more than 33 minutes, and yet another candidate for our “Topographic Oceans” award, 2026 going down, I think, in memory as the year when the ultra-long form of music came back into fashion.
With such a piece, it is a fruitless exercise trying to write down for you every single nuance, change of direction, and so on. What I have done is to embed the piece at the foot of the review for you – grab a drink, sit down, play it with your favourite item of stereo equipment, and allow yourself to be drawn in, preferably with some sight of eternity, staring out at that incredible night sky (I am lucky, in that I live in an area relatively untouched by light pollution), and realise that we are but tiny players in the cosmic dream. We shouldn’t be intimidated by that thought. Indeed, it is a comfort to me that the constant imbecilic noise we are subjected to in the modern era is, in a grand scheme of things, insignificant, and we should ignore it, and allow our minds and souls to be touched in the manner in which this beautifully expansive and warm suite of music invites us.
The word minimalist is something of an oxymoron in the context of listening to this, because there is an expansive sense, a sound which looks outwards, with hidden depths which slowly, but surely, allow themselves to pour over you. Piano, synth, percussive effects, acoustic guitar, soundscapes, singleton notes, all ranging from urgent to laid back to looped to symphonic. I am not here going to add to the (sometimes noisy) debate about the recent Prog at the Proms hosted by The BBC (I rather enjoyed it), but for the future, I would love them to do a concert with modern progressive music, and Malcolm Galloway should be right at the forefront of the queue of artists deserving of such exposure.
An incredible piece of music, deeply touching, and had he ended there, that would have been sufficient for a recommendation to buy, but we do have more!
Natrolite is a silicate mineral species found in Germany. The track is a relatively short twelve minutes, and is more of an expansive classical piece, with orchestral impact from the off, and these alongside synth effects and urgent piano interjections create a pleasing soundscape which fairly races along and creates a dramatic picture perhaps at odds with what must be a fairly mundane existence, or maybe the composers intent was to tell the story of historical events racing past a disinterested observer’s eyes.
Scherzo No. 1 follows (scherzo being a short composition). So, a mere three minutes of music, symphonic effects and piano dancing against each other, at times mournful, but then playful.
Ice Fossils is up next, those creatures from our dim and distant past almost perfectly preserved, and once merely the topic of science fiction in terms of genetic resurrection, but now science fact in recreating their genetic code. This is another big piece of music, almost seventeen minutes in length, and the very slow pace at the beginning perfectly reflects the vast passages of time we are dealing with here, and some of the noises are ghostly, perhaps mammals crying out over the millennia, trapped with nowhere to go, with the orchestration portraying some sadness both at what we have lost, and the predicament of long extinct species.
A Lacquered Ceramic Owl must be a contender for this website’s “title of the year” award. From the off, we have a playful, jazz-infused delight, piano and percussion appreciating the joy of said object, a track to get you off your feet and have a wee jig, the second half then settling into a more subdued pace, perhaps the owl contemplating the mysteries of the lives he observes.
Ostinato for Electric Guitar and Laptop is the final regular track on the album and helpfully provides the purchaser with the music to play for him/herself. Ostinato is a continually repeated musical phrase or rhythm, and this is borne out on the music which I find entrancing, Galloway, of course, being a highly talented guitarist, but here he reduces the technique you hear elsewhere to that beguiling repetition, the keys playing off of that with minimal percussive effects, and as it progresses, the keys expand to provide a more orchestral richness, and we get a burst of guitar riffing as well, the pace picking up relentlessly – continual repetition does not equate to dullness here at all, with the clever use of tone, pace, and nuanced changes of direction providing for a wonderful way to close an album, finishing with a distinct flourish.
It is rare for this website to comment in any great detail on bonus tracks, and I will not deviate from that policy here, so suffice to say the very short Flugle Doodle is a wonderful, and short, celebration of that rich and warm brass instrument, whilst there is a backing track for the Ostinato without the electric guitar.
In closing, I will record just how much I enjoy this series of albums from a very talented composer and musician, and it is perfect for those of you who enjoy the classical world as much as your harder rock.