Alone is a personal expression in music that is as stylistically diverse as it is emotionally poignant. Channeling a Balinese field recording on Placida before delving into the melancholy acoustic folk song, Ana Luciá, Justin Robert is unafraid of reducing each composition down to its barest essentials. On Alone, the first in a trilogy of albums which are partially improvised, Justin Roberts talents as a multi-instrumentalist are informed by his keen sense for letting the texture of each sound speak volumes. Every track on Alone is an exercise in restraint that results in a minimal masterpiece. From the solo guitar title track up through Tuned to Love, his intimate duet with Lili de la Mora, Alone is punctuated by brief silences and environmental ambience that allow its listeners to reach a state of divine contemplation. Perhaps the most sonically complex of all these compositions is Tones. Beginning as a somber dirge only to evolve into raucousness, Tones functions as the albums bridge, and carries us by way of Justin Roberts virtuosic percussion toward one final revelation: the closing track, Oh, Sunlight. This piece is a lilting epiphany a humble articulation of the wisdom that after each of lifes travesties, we must bear witness to a luminous light at the end of the tunnel, and soldier onward. Far from being merely a fantastic late-night album, Alone teaches us how, with positive intentions and a little bit of focus, the sadness of solitude can ultimately become our transcendence.
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