Graham Greene is one of the very few guitarists I can digest without the aid of words to complete his compositions, a man who can paint a picture with his instrument of choice like few others, a man who can take you places with him but still allow you to wander off on your own through those soundscapes. Over the years I’ve enjoyed a lot of Graham’s work,but right here right now I don’t think I’ve enjoyed anything he’s done quite so much.
‘A Ripple in Time’ is a remarkable collection of songs, largely instrumental and full of rich texture and variety spanning and mixing as it does Eastern, Celtic and a pot of other diverse influences to create colours and moods and images that sometimes rear so clearly into view and at others gently materialize of the horizon. The heart and soul of it all though is the guitar: that remarkable instrument that can be blunt-edged (there are some huge riffs here), or soothingly melodic or dazzlingly complex. Like painting with three sizes of brush.
Opening with ‘City of Fear’ we are introduced to this eighth solo album with a wild and dark ride into the night before ‘Goblin’s Banquet’ and ‘Night of the Djinn’ keep that mythical dimension in mind, the former a soundscape of riffs and melodies that evoke a busy room and a riotous feast and the latter a journey through the hot and fragrant night air of a desert-drenched land. It’s not all fantasy though, ‘Maidens Three’ is rather latter-day Ritchie Blackmore and a step back in time rather than sideways into a magical realm.
‘Tale Goes On’ is the first of two tracks to feature the vocals of his wife Donna, is a departure that works and adds even more threads to the tapestry; the second track she sings on ‘Our Time in Hell’ also sees Graham himself sing, something that is a bit of a rarity in itself. It acts as an epic contemplation on ‘climate change’ and suitably grave and undeniably powerful.
Elsewhere we get the diverse and fantastic (in the true sense of the word) tracks like the sadness-soaked ‘Mab’s Lament’ and closer ‘Beyond The Rings’ which takes us finally off planet and out into a universe of possibility.
This is an album that keeps moving, one that seems fueled by a desire to explore, one that looks at the world through wide open eyes and wonders – it’s full of light and shade, symphony and melody, huge scope and minute detail. It’s an album that growth and seems to almost breathe. It’s an album that at times seems solid as steel, and others fragile as crystal. There are bold stokes here and sumptuous complexity – it’s all here waiting for you just to listen…