When he isn't doing film scores or working with art houses, Mr. Helpling takes his guitar experience and does stellar music on his own that reaches into some very deep spaces. He's also one half of the duo that did The Crossing back in 2010, arguably the best ambient album of the last ten years or so. But as much as I love that particular album, this latest outing is impressive in another way alltogether: it's a true bonafide "solo" effort. Everything you hear on A Sea Without Memory was done using just one guitar through some programmed pedals and recorded live to 2-track with very little processing, which is surprising when you actually sit down and let this thing wash over you and realize how much "bigger" it sounds than you'd expect.

While there are separate "songs" here, this is really an album experience in the textbook sense and when taken as such you can appreciate it to a greater degree. Definitely not a traditional "guitarist" album nor typical in the ambient / new age schema, I've come back to this musical well fairly often throughout the year....and hopefully for many more to come