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An ambient accomplice of Brian Eno creates pastoral music for strings Leo Abrahams, guitar-slinger for Brian Eno, Paul Simon and Imogen Heap, makes an instrumental time-spanning CD Leo Abrahams
The Grape and the Grain
(Just Music) by John Diliberto Guitarist Leo Abrahams must exist in a perpetual fugue state. Upon hearing his new CD, The Grape and the Grain, you might not suspect he's been collaborating with Brian Eno for years. His Scene Memory album of abstract, electronically manipulated guitar finds few echoes here. The Unrest Cure, his previous CD of rockin' electronica vocal tunes with longtime associates like Ed Harcourt and KT Tunstall, couldn't possibly be from the same musician. Instead, The Grape and the Grain traffics in a poetic reverie harking back to the sound of his debut album, Honey Trap, a melodic trap of gorgeous, sometimes nostalgic themes.

The tone is set, though hardly frozen, on the opening track, "Masquerade." A medieval lute called the bandura doubles the Renaissance melody of Abrahams's acoustic guitar, biding time until the cello and hurdy-gurdy crank in. It's the first step on a walk in the woods through classically arranged forests, Americana-dusted plains and English folk-fed streams. The sound hits the ears as unplugged, but there's lots of 50s reverb and tremolo guitar layered into the acoustic guitars, ethnic strings, and an ensemble that could have come off the corner of a Parisian café. "From Here" has an early-60s "Ebb Tide" feel while "Spring Snow" echoes the Pat Metheny group, with Abrahams's arpeggiated guitar riff and Tim Harris's double bass. With its twangy guitar, "Ghost on Every Corner" is a pastoral riff on spaghetti western themes.

Abrahams brings us back home on the album's closer, "Daughter of Persuasion," a haunting piece that culminates in grinding hurdy-gurdy and distorted guitars over an insistent groove. It's back to the world, but the world looks better now. Like The Penguin Café Orchestra in the past or Ludovico Einaudi in the present, Leo Abrahams taps a vein in music that is ultimately more profound than its pleasant, quaint surface. He pulls off a rare feat, making music that looks wistfully to a simpler time, but is touched with a modernist's hand.