The culmination of a trilogy of releases, Rob Johnson’s ‘hi’ sees the Salisbury musician reach a zenith in terms of how he’s able to articulate and craft his unique brand of folktronica experimental instrumental records. Created in the aftermath of a near-death experience in 2017, when a burst appendix and sepsis nearly killed him, the entire series sees Johnson experiment with a whole host of sounds that convey widely differing meanings and emotions through the records.
You’re never quite clear where he’s going to take you, with each song on the record seemingly going a different way in both the instruments and in the feeling. ‘sea of skeletons’ feels markedly different from the more frenzied and abrasive opener. Here, Johnson’s using an intricate acoustic melody as the bedrock, really leaning into the folktronica environment he’s so adept at crafting. But then, on ‘fading orange soon’, he takes you on a journey that feels so detached from what you were previously experiencing that it starts to disorient you for a while before hurling you down a rabbit hole that you can’t nor would you want to escape from. The mesmerising electronic instrumental ballad of sorts is neatly divided into several sections that each feel like their own moments to be mesmerised by.
All in all, ‘hi’ is not a straightforward or immediately digestible record to an average listener. It grows on you though, both for its sheer scale of conception and vision but also for the harmonies and melodies that seem to start feeling imprinted in the back of your head. There’s nothing quite like a good instrumental record that’s unafraid of breaking boundaries to put you in a state of bliss and hi does that effortlessly well.