Worked on between stretches as a principal producer on Pink Floyd’s new album, Andy Jackson’s resulting studio project doesn’t have much to do with The Endless River — other than proximity. Jackson, when he wasn’t busy with David Gilmour and Co., and when he had an idea worth pursuing, would add it to the on-going recordings that became Signal to Noise.
More subdued than Roger Waters would have countenanced, but with a sharper lyrical focus than the Gilmour-led Pink Floyd albums that followed their split, Signal to Noise probably has more in common by feel than in any clear fashion with the group Jackson has worked with — principally as an engineer — since 1983’s The Final Cut. If pressed for a direct comparison, it would probably instead be to Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright’s underrated 1996 solo project Broken China, only with a far broader sound palette.
Really, though, the overt influences (spacious keyboards coupled with knifing guitar licks, in service of strikingly introspective lyrics) might not seem quite so overt were it not for his curriculum vitae. Listen more closely, and there is a flinty sense of individuality surrounding Andy Jackson’s work here. Take what you know about Jackson away, and he probably has more in common with, say, the quieter moments of next-gen prog by Steve Wilson than to Floyd, per se.
Andy Jackson’s success in that is, it seems, bound up in the care he took. Every note, every word feels perfectly placed. Jackson, in fact, recorded parts of Signal to Noise in two different spare rooms, since he’d moved amidst the sessions — yet he decided that nothing would be released until it felt complete, whenever that might be. This working process gave Jackson a stress-free atmosphere to create, and to edit. The results on Signal to Noise, recently released via Esoteric Antenna, remain taut and focused — the opposite, in that way at least, to Pink Floyd’s more free-form, occasionally esoteric Endless River.
He’d written both melodies and lyrics, with an eye toward having guests in to complete things. But, increasingly, Andy Jackson came to the realization that a solo album should be just that. And thus, Signal to Noise — again, very unlike the concurrent Pink Floyd project, which turned into a larger collaboration between the remaining members of the group, archival items and in-studio guests — began to take shape on Jackson’s laptop.
As he explores mature themes, about becoming an adult, about life’s larger narrative arcs, about the choices we make, Andy Jackson’s musical conceptions reflect a boundless sense of ambition. While the songs themselves focus in personal ways on the human condition, he couches them on Signal to Noise with wonders as sweeping as the world around us.
Unsurprisingly, Jackson spent just as much time on the sound — completing a magical lossless 96/24 quad mix that gives Signal to Noise an atmosphere just as special (Pink Floyd comparisons be damned) as the music itself.
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