Sam Thomas – Blind Theatre

On the cover of Blind Theatre, a young boy fashions spaceships from boxes and bottles while behind, a full-size shuttle blasts itself skywards. It’s not the most nuanced of images, but it’s apt for an album that soars with ambition whilst still conveying a palpable sense of childlike curiosity.

Twenty-five-year-old composer and gifted multi-instrumentalist Sam Thomas weds rocks both post and prog, with epic, goosebump-raising soundscapes rubbing shoulders with flights of flamboyant extravagance. Sometimes, both traits co-exist within a single track, as evidenced by opener Gift’s journey from dappled guitar ripples and sci-fi vocal snippets, through cinematic strings and crunchy, Matt Bellamy-ish distortion, to a grandiose finale straight out of a seventies rock opera – all in the space of three and a half minutes. The rest is less capricious, but no less intriguing, with Lanterns’ mountainous conclusion and Temples’ slow-burn vistas giving a clear picture of Thomas’s potential. [Chris Buckle]