Tom Eaton: Twenty-Two: Collected Singles, 2021-2022
Tom Eaton
At 130 minutes and twenty-two tracks, Tom Eaton's latest collection is as comprehensive an account of his art as any he might possibly create. In this case the word ‘singles' doesn't, of course, refer to songs vying for position on AM radio playlists but simply to the fact that each was shared publicly as a separate track over a two-year span. Gathering them allows the material to register as a collective expression rather than as standalones, and the music impresses all the more when so presented.
A producer, engineer, masterer, and instrumentalist, Eaton has been a jack-of-all-trades since 1993 and since 2009 has enjoyed an ongoing collaboration with Windham Hill Records founder Will Ackerman. Eaton's worked on hundreds of music projects, among them Ackerman's recent Positano Songs and Brothers, a trio album created by him, Ackerman, and Jeff Oster. Twenty-Two is Eaton at his purest, however, given that he wrote, performed, produced, recorded, mixed, and mastered all of it alone. Much of it was recorded in rural New Hampshire, home to Eaton and his family, at his Sounds & Substance studio, a converted barn with a mastering studio on the first floor and a composing space on the second.
There's variety aplenty in the pieces. Whereas some use acoustic piano as a locus of orientation, others are enigmatic, reverb-heavy evocations that suggest remote, uninhabited places. With Eaton blurring boundaries between genres, certain tracks suggest connections to dark ambient, new age, and even post-rock, and there are settings, naturally, where it would be possible to imagine ‘70s-era Eno as the creator instead of Eaton (“The Last of the Light (edit)”). The piano-and-orchestra setting “Thorn Hill” makes for an introduction that's as calming as it is enrapturing. Immediately following, “Oord Nine (edit)” transports us to an ethereal realm where streams of shimmering lights and gentle whooshes co-exist. Mystery permeates “In the Shadow” when resonant electric guitar textures intermingle with percussive tinkles and bass tones. Whereas some tracks brood suggestively (“January,” “The Night Before”), ones such as “Patience, Part One,” “Daybreak,” and “Into the Blue (edit)” soothe with a serene slowburn. In a nice gesture, Eaton offers a heartfelt tribute to one of the greats with “The Void (For Vangelis).”
On a recording largely free of explicit rhythm elements, “Shelter” stands out for animating an atmospheric front-line of piano and electric guitar with a downtempo drum groove. Needless to say, Eaton's simulation of a live small-ensemble performance is totally credible, just as it is in the later “Thirst” with its Doug Lunn-like fretless bass. Eaton's a master of evocation, not just for coining a title such as “Across the River” but for assembling instrumental elements in such a way that the image of a barge slowly drifting on mist-covered waters in some faraway exotic land is convincingly conjured. An occasional field recording also works its way into a track to enhance that sense of place. The project invites the listener to commit two hours to Eaton's world, but the listener is all the better and wholly rewarded for doing so. As his other releases have done before it, the recording shows him to be a master of his craft.March 2023