release date: Mar. 24, 2003
format: digital
[album rate: 3 / 5] [2,92]
producer: Robin Guthrie
label: Bella Union - nationality: Scotland, UK
Studio album debut as soloist by Robin Guthrie, former guitarist of Cocteau Twins and released on the label founded by Guthrie and former bandmate Simon Raymonde in '97 - their first release being Raymonde's only solo album Blame Someone Else (1997). It's been exactly seven years since the final album by Cocteau Twins and since then Guthrie has primarily produced and featured on other artists' releases. He also took part in the dream pop project Violet Indiana from 2000 to 2006 together with vocalist Siobhan de Maré, and they ended up releasing two full-length studio albums, some singles and two eps, but Imperial is Guthrie's first actual solo album.
Not surprisingly, it contains instrumental compositions built on guitar with bold use of reverb, echo and delay effects to create ten primarily ambient compositions.
Guthrie is an original guitarist and a unique sound wizard but an overall verdict of his spacious creations doesn't ring any bells shouting "masterpiece!" or "fantastic!". It's nice to hear from him (again) but I guess a lot of people and especially the old fans of the Twins had hoped for more; or just something else. It all sounds very fine, but with no obvious differences from track to track it quickly sounds like music for meditation or compositions with missing layers, or perhaps music for visual art. In fact, Guthrie would later on establish himself as productive composer of soundtracks, but until then, this is... a start.
[ 👌allmusic.com 3 / 5 stars ]
