Harlan Silverman – Music For Stillness

Harlan Silverman is a member of The Cosmic Tones Research Trio from Portland, Oregon. For the past two years and two records, that group has stood for a lightly esoteric strain of spiritual jazz with discreet folk and electronic ornamentation. For his first solo album, Silverman has certainly drawn on the building blocks of his band, but weights them differently and assembles them in another way. He has removed the jazz entirely, and so Music For Stillness sounds more like – careful now – new age than anything else yet to emerge from the orbit of the Portland trio.

Multi-instrumentalist Silverman may play all manner of instruments on the album – cello, viola, piano, synthesiser and guitar – but he leaves the Far Eastern bansuri flute to guide us through this global ambient village. After all the radical noise battles fought in pop over recent decades, it is only logical that the true scandal could only be an album that glorifies stillness. But don’t worry: Music For Stillness sounds more like Shabaka Hutchings and André 3000 than a yoga class.