Anonymous Lights by Robert Haigh

Pianist Robert Haigh emerged as a peripheral presence in the early 1980s UK Industrial scene with his group Truth Club and contributions to a number of Nurse With Wound albums. He went on to release a clutch of ambient piano records, but famously changed course in the 1990s with his influential drum ’n’ bass project Omni Trio, frequently folding sparkling piano arpeggios into intricate percussive webs. One of the main instigators of a more pastoral, and arguably less earthily exciting style that some labelled ‘intelligent jungle’. Haigh put the Omni Trio name to bed in 2004 and returned to solo piano performance.

For those like myself who always found the Omni Trio piano sound too sickly-synthetic, the muted delicacy of his tone on this latest collection will be very welcome. Haigh’s approach has its roots in Satie’s Gymnopédies (and his deliberation also recalls a less bloody-minded take on the some composer’s Vexations) but there are also echoes of Roedelius, Roger Eno and particularly Harold Budd in these brief sketches. As with all of these performers there’s a sense of walking a tightrope between luminous simplicity and becalmed schmaltz. Unlike his peers Haigh manages to avoid lapsing into the latter at any stage.

Indeed, the raison d'être of these pieces is that they constitute a drama in which resolutions are continually suggested and then gracefully and ingeniously avoided. That’s not to say that anything on Anonymous Lights approaches the opaque morbidity of his work on NWW’s classic Spiral Insana, but neither does the album replicate the E’d up rictus grin of Omni Trio’s Together. It’s pretty music, certainly, but there’s a fierce intelligence at work here, and the music has a curious grey tint of unease that keeps you on your toes.

Wire

Robert Haigh is a British electronic, ambient and experimental musician. Born in Yorkshire, he moved to London in the late 70s to study art. There he produced ambient and industrial music under the name Sema and worked with Nurse with Wound. In the 90s he became known for a unique style of ambient drum and bass under the name Omni Trio. His later music is a return to introspective piano ambience.