eople dismiss out of hand the possibility that their own love may be altogether unnecessary. At one point or another, each person is filled with the belief that their love, to quote Beethoven’s last quartet, “must be”. When confronted, however, as I imagine Glenn Johnson must have been on many an occasion, by that moment wherein their other is seen laughing with someone else, one subsequently realizes just how easily they could be with anyone else and that contrary to Beethoven’s rousing declarations, in actuality, the two of them could indeed be “just as well otherwise”. Much of The Troubled Sleep Of Piano Magic, is an attempt to come to terms with this realization.

The album begins to unfold with echoed footsteps, a frenzied pushing of buttons, silenced only by the slamming of a rusty elevator shaft. The impression being given is that it is no one other than the listener themselves that is now being carried in the bosom of this box, up through an empty space in the walls, towards Johnson’s flat. Once inside, ringing guitars echo against these walls, knocking loose tiny dust clouds of sound, which unfurl amidst Johnson’s earnest whispers, which carry loosely woven strands poetry in its breath.

Upon “The Unwritten Law,” gentle acoustic guitar arpeggios are plucked and sing as Klima’s, Angele David-Guillou, skips across them as though she were walking across rocks laying atop the steamy ocean at night. Despite its sparse instrumentation, “The Unwritten Law,” evokes a rich environment overcast in a haze of starlit nostalgia. Her poetic musings swiftly gaze about, in search of a means to bridge the seemingly endless gap, which separates a person from their lover. As the album ages, what one comes to find, is that similar to a poet’s use of particular images or turns of phrase throughout a piece of written work, Johnson faintly dresses many of these songs with such devices in order to create a better sense of cohesiveness. For the most part these devices entwine each song with a lovely sense of asymmetry, which many will enjoy stumbling across again and again. However, others will understandably wish that he would attempt more of an effort in branching out to other regions. Creations such as “Speed The Road, Rush The Lights,” with its stuttering drumbeat and aggressive guitar lines whose sound, like an onomatopoeia, resembles the action of the title, convey the anxious tales of their protagonist; yet, whereas, Writers Without Homes, seemed laboured over to a tortuous extent, these movements seem too unguided, and are occasionally left alone to wander far too much for their own good.

This is not to say that The Troubled Sleep Of Piano Magic, is devoid of any such moments of discovery. Lyrically, this marks one of Johnson’s best compositions, which in itself is to say a lot, as unlike many of his peers, Johnson consciously attempts to mould his words into poetry. On “Speed The Road, Rush The Lights,” he observes a woman’s “aspirin white legs, scarred by young loves overbite“, and afterwards, as on “Comets” he remarks how “like Japanese poets who capture a Summer in only three lines, with just one kiss I want to tell you but it takes all night”. Often sounding as though he were enclosed in a womb of silence, Johnsons’ whispers induce a level of intimacy akin to a bird momentarily resting, perched atop a branch, intoning its secret tales to anyone who may listen. Take this image a step further, and Johnson begins to resemble the protagonist in Nietzsche's, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, who traverses back through a town, from his place in the woods, to proclaim that “God Is Dead”. Only in Johnson’s case, it’s love that’s dead. Or, at least, our romanticized idea of it.

As for the music in itself “The Toolboth Martyrs”, is a point of departure, embedded in subtle, digital rumbles, poignant glockenspiel, and scarce violin stemming out into a hissing air of static. At the pole opposite of these swarming string swells sits the desolate “Help Me Warm This Frozen Heart.” A dreadful space surrounds each note, as solemn bells beckon, sounding like droplets off a slowly melting icicle. Elsewhere, a Spanish timbre is spilt into the chord progressions of “I Am The Teacher’s Son”, and Johnson is in fine form, his solemn voice cut in such a way as to carve into one’s head the impression that he is a lonely European intellectual who wanders the streets restlessly.

The closing chapter marked “Comets”, is one of the best Piano Magic has yet to pen. The song finds beauty in its simple, almost silky acoustic guitar, gradually joining hands with an ambient wash of soothing sounds, which might just as well be a weepy Ondes-Martenot accompaniment reminiscent of late French composer Olivier Messiaen. If this were to be Piano Magic’s last creation, as rumours have claimed it to be, the group has bid a lovely farewell, announcing that though love is dead, it can still exist.