Dominic Miller

CD version. Silent Light is the ECM debut of the guitarist Dominic Miller, a quiet record of eleven short pieces played mostly on solo acoustic guitar. Best known as Sting's guitarist and co-writer of the hit Shape of My Heart, Miller steps out here with music of his own, sparse in texture and drawn from the many places he has lived and played. He was born in Argentina to an American father and an Irish mother, grew up in the United States from the age of ten, studied there and in England, and now lives in France.

The album was recorded in March 2016 at Rainbow Studio in Oslo, with Jan Erik Kongshaug as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer. In his liner note Miller explains that he discussed several musicians and line-ups with Eicher before deciding to record mostly alone. His longtime colleague Miles Bould adds discreet percussion on four tracks and drums on Chaos Theory, where Miller also overdubs electric bass. The booklet carries short notes by Sting and by Paul Simon, who writes that Miller "has a beautiful touch, with a fragrance of jazz and English folk."

The Latin American side of Miller's background is strongest in Baden, dedicated to the Brazilian guitarist and composer Baden Powell, and in Urban Waltz, which has a Venezuelan flavour. Le Pont has the air of early 20th-century Paris, and Valium recalls the Celtic tunes of Bert Jansch. Fields of Gold is a hushed instrumental reading of one of Sting's best-known ballads, kept to just over two minutes. Chaos Theory, with bass and drums, builds shimmering, crystalline harmonies, while the opening What You Didn't Say lets a few guitar notes ring out over percussion that is barely audible.

Reviewers stressed the space in the music. In Stereophile, Robert Baird found Miller's "warm, round tone, his touch on the strings, and his senses of timing and phrasing" stunning, and praised the empty spaces between the chords. Fernando Gonzalez wrote in Jazziz that the album "plays like a celebration of sound, silence and those mysterious spaces between them." ECM Reviews noted that Bould learned of the death of the percussionist Naná Vasconcelos the night before the session, which lends the recording a quiet poignancy.

This is the CD edition, ECM 2518, first released on 7 April 2017.