Last Glass

Kim Pieters and Peter Stapleton (both of Flies Inside The Sun and Rain), and Bruce Russell (of A Handful Of Dust and The Dead C.), are immediately sympathetic on Last Glass. It’s not too much of a surprise – particularly given Stapleton sometimes joined Russell and Alastair Galbraith in A Handful Of Dust – but what’s particularly winning about Last Glass is just how comfortable the three artists are in each other’s presence. There’s something vertiginous about their playing, as though they’re fully intent on pushing their music off the cliff’s edge and letting it vault down, watching it spin and writhe its way through the skies. Russell’s guitar is particularly woozy, often scraped and scarred with metal slide; Pieters’s bass is sensuous and sidereal, Stapleton’s drums propulsive and dazzling. And when they recuse themselves from their usual instruments and send hissing washes of synth across the home studio, things get particularly delirious. Last Glass is an overlooked gem.