Over the last 12 months or so I’ve acquired a little stack of CDs by independent musicians. Most of these I acquired from acts I shared a bill withhh at last summer’s gigs.

Being a rubbish music fan (I make music far more often that I listen to other people’s), I have not listened to all of them. To make amends I thought I’d do some proper listening and write some little mini reviews.

First up is Tom Stedman’s Little Blue Dot.

Tom is a solo guitar player and Little Blue Dot showcases his guitar playing across 4 tracks. The recording is very simple – a solo steel string guitar, a good mic, a bit of reverb, no metronome or click track to be found. Lovely.

Tom is a virtuoso so the guitar playing here is full of fingerstyle twiddles, lightening arpeggios, harmonics and all sorts of cleverness. For all the technical skill that’s not the point of the music however. The technique is there to serve the music which sketches and meanders its way through modal chord progressions in an almost improvisatory way.

Little Blue Dot, the title track, is 7 minutes of bliss. B the second track has a great melody. Pootle, the third track has some lovely little excursions. The closing track, Eye of the Observer features percussive guitar paying to accompany its minor key motifs in way that really works well.

If you like soundtracky instrumental guitar stuff, Tom Stedman is for you. For reasons I don’t understand, Tom is literally the only indie musician I know who doesn’t use bandcamp, so you’ll have to head over to cdbaby to grab a copy. Alternatively, get yourself over to Tom’s website where he has a new album available too.