solo album

Released by Sonic Oyster records

Catalogue Number: SOR39

Reviews:

Susan Matthews – In Search of the Shadow Walker
(Sonic Oyster Records SOR39)
CDR

Let me start off with an admittance that I wasn’t (and indeed am still not) overly taken with the opening track here. The birds are too high in the mix and the music too overtly reminiscent of Current 93 at their most bucolic for me to fall into. It’s not bad by any stretch it just isn’t for me. The rest of the album on the other hand is fantastic. This is the first time I’ve heard Susan follow an entirely instrumental path and (with all due respect to her singing) it’s something I’d certainly like to hear more of. She has a fully developed and thoroughly engrossing composition style that, aside from occasional brushes with the familiar (track 4 – Broken – would be perfectly at home on the soundtrack to Amelie), is an absolute delight. She weaves heavy, weighty, almost gothic, tapestries around delicate melodies and a prismatic exoticism. A beautiful album.

Ian Holloway, Wonderful Wooden Reasons, Oct 2010

Susan Matthews – In Search of the Shadow Walker
(Sonic Oyster Records SOR39)

In Search Of The Shadow Walker…matches brief, almost impressionistic piano, synth and keyboard pieces with subtle sound effects and snippets of natural sound. The mood is dreamlike and evanescent. Short tracks and plenty of variety make for an absorbing listen

Terrascope, July 2011