Given the success of artists like Jonny Greenwood and Clint Mansell, the decision by guitarist Bill Ryder-Jones to switch from the psychedelic folk of The Coral to orchestral soundtrack music is not so surprising.
His debut full-length solo album is an imaginary film score to Italo Calvino's If, On A Winter's Night A Traveller, a postmodernist novel with a strong meditative theme of finding and sustaining creativity.
Assisted by friends, relatives and the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, it was recorded in Ryder-Jones' hometown of Liverpool in locations which included a Scandinavian Church, a grade II listed warehouse and his mom's house in West Kirby.
It is not his first venture into this territory. Having cut his orchestral teeth with the string arrangements for his former band's Roots & Echoes album, he also released an EP in 2009 of soundtrack music to Laurence Easeman's short film called Leave Taking.
This has led some to dub him as Merseyside's answer to Ennio Morricone but his preference for melancholy piano refrains and sumptuous orchestral arrangements are more reminiscent of another Italian composer, Ludovico Einaudi. Ryder-Jones also cites Abel Korzeniowski's music to the movie A Single Man as an inspiration.
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He describes Le Grande Desordre as the only 'proper' song on the album but it is actually one of two with strong echoes of Nick Drake, the other being the penultimate track, Give Me A Name. There are also hushed vocals on Leaning (Star of Sweden), a song about the feeling of being used.
The remainder of the album are instrumentals beginning with the title track and closing resolutely with Some Absolute End.
The most effective pieces have simple, restrained themes, notably the gorgeous Intersect which is the album's high point.
Another striking track is the darkly atmospheric By The Church of Apollonia which was conceived as a backdrop to a sinister sex scene.
Less successful is Enlace, an attempt to provide a grand centrepiece which builds dramatically and then gets a bit out of hand with some ill-conceived Floydian electric guitar at the end.
Missteps like this are probably inevitable given the ambitious nature of the project but overall this is an immensely rewarding listen.
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