SAM THOMAS

— First review of this album —

Let's start saying that this album is the indirect reason why I'm currently collaborating in the post/math team. Sam Thomas published the link to his album on the forum saying that his biggest influence was Pink Floyd. I listened to it and suggested him to the Post Rock team, instead. After more than one year he was still being evaluated, and I realized that the team had actually a very long evaluation queue. This is why I proposed myself to the team.

Old story. Sam Thomas was then added to the archives and this is still the only album of his that I know.

It's considered an EP, but a 38 minutes album has the length of many full releases. It would fit a vynil very well with two tracks per side.

"Blue Cologne" starts with few keyboard chords, but just after few seconds it's already far from being Floydian, even if it can remind them a bit in the beginning. With a more "Gilmour like" sound of the guitar, maybe. The electronic drum which enters in the second half of the track doesn't have anything Floydian, anyway, as it's made of minor keyboard chords, a fast electronic drumming and a guitar riff tendentially rock.

The electronic drum is used to join the first track to the second. Now the guitar plays harping on major chords with a reverb effect that makes me think to WISHBONE AHS's Pilgrimage. The child speech which appear in the middle and I can't understand, is I think, a sort of standard in Post/Math. FROM MONUMENT TO MASSES is what comes to my mind. I also think that the electronic drums used to move out from the relaxing environment and enter a rock section. Highly repetitive, with the addition of sounds and electronics it slows back down in the last minutes giving the track circuarity,

"Gift" starts on the last chords of the previous track. After an intro made of keyboards at high volume, there's a part mainly driven by guitar which jams over two major chords up to the middle of the track when bass notes which I suppose coming from a guitar effect start playing a hard riff. The effect is changed after some repetitions, but the music doesn't change, I think this may be a sort of Hendrix's solo, just too repetitive for him. Distortion off in the last minute. There's a melodic coda leading to the following track.

I hear again the WISHBONE ASH element, but the guitar is able to sovvert it. When it wants. Hard electronics enter to make the guitar detach itself from the repetitive mood, but it continues again and again while percussion seems to put all the possible effort in variating it. It partially succeeds as later the keys are able also to support a more Gilmourish solo in a good crescendo but without the orginality and the instrumentists the former Floyd can use. The coda acquires a celtic flavor which is not outplaced at all.

An interesting debut dated 2015. More albums are available on Bandcamp.