Adam Miller (4) – Gateway

If you’re thinking in any manner that the music found here on Gateway is going to dovetail into that of Miller’s electronic band Chromatics, you should sit back and spin this outing and see where it takes you.

Gateway is a hypnotic drifting affair, comprised of eighteen guitar instrumentals (some very short), each lightly intersecting with the others very cleanly and inspirationally, divined from Miller’s musical heroes, most evident being the Cure, and certainly Brian Eno. The album is a minimalist affair revolving around minor-key chords that float and weave with a Freudian sense of discovering the self. That said, Gateway seems to be an entirely solo listening experience, where your thoughts are free to roam, navigated by aspirational musical progressions that exist somewhere between cozy dreams and a tentative reality; though by the second track, all aspects of reality should have drifted out the window.

To that end, Miller explains, “When I’m in a good workflow, I usually start my day off by just picking up a guitar, zoning out, and recording whatever is passing through the quantum field at the time. It’s a visceral process. I’m not even really paying attention to what I’m doing as I’m recording. I’m usually at my purest creatively at the very beginning of the day, and over the years, I’ve recorded whatever happens in the moment and then organized that material into a library that I’ve continued to draw from.”

Review by Jenell Kesler