If you’ve been following the talented Adam Gibbons, the driving force behind Lack of Afro, The Damn Straights, and The Unity Sextet, you’ve undoubtedly nodded your head to a funky excursion or two, or enjoyed some of the different sounds from his other projects as well. Whether it’s straight funk, jazz or punk filled hip hop, the all-around talent knows how to deliver. His latest effort, a soundtrack to a movie not created, sees Gibbons go the cinematic route and give us another solid effort at that. A project to be released in three parts for a soundtrack to the film The Last Bastion, the Here We Go EP is a first listen to what we’re in for in this special project.
“Long before all the Lack of Afro stuff took over, being a film composer was all I wanted to do. All my heroes were composers – guys like John Barry, John Williams & Thomas Newman and more recently David Holmes, Daniel Pemberton and Ludwig Goransson. There is something magical about a great film score – it adds so much to the cinematic experience in every way imaginable. I was always drawn to what the music was doing and I was fascinated by the guys who were the composers of the magic.”
Running the gamut between funk, soul, and jazz, Gibbons goes in on the string and horn arrangements and although he’s an in-demand player for television scores, he has not yet been contacted to score a film. So he does what any sensible and talented musician/ producer would do: create his own. Following in the footsteps of such talents like David Holmes (who went the same path of creating his own soundtracks, most notable 1995’s This Film’s Crap, Let’s Slash The Seats), this soundtrack is the musical backdrop of four men who pack up all their worldly possessions and travel to a place called The Last Bastion to try and fulfill their lives to the fullest for eternity. Gibbons thought up each scene in his head and imagined what the music for each scene would sound like from the point of view of a director..
Listen closely and you can feel each scene unravel through the music. Well done and spot-on as soundtracks go, The Last Bastion runs the gamut from airy, atmospheric, string-filled compositions, to upbeat, guitar-driven tracks, along with soulful outbursts that complete the first portion of the soundtrack. The depth of this first effort is really impressive. We knew Gibbons was talented, but this shows the listener his depth in music production, another feather in his musical cap. Listen to the EP below and purchase after the stream.
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