I’ve gone into doing this review with basically knowing very little about the artiste in question, other than I watched him play live with Porcupine Tree, 2 years ago on their Closure/Continuation Tour, and I’ll be seeing him again, this time playing alongside Steven Wilson in May of 2025. And apart from seeing him in action as a very capable guitarist/backing vocalist performing somebody else’s material, that pretty much my entire knowledge of Randy McStine. Yet I am a big fan of Steven Wilson, and for him to choose this guy out of the multitude of musicians that he could have easily asked to accompany him on stage, made me realise that there’s likely far more to Randy McStine than merely being a handy session musician. So when the opportunity came along to review his latest solo album, I simply thought … why not.
On reviewing all the sleeve notes I also found out that Steven Wilson has mixed 5 out of the 10 tracks on this release, as well as Porcupine Tree drummer Gavin Harrison guesting on one song, Steven Wilson band member Adam Holzman playing keyboards on 2 songs, and former Steven Wilson associate Marco Minnemann drumming on 2 songs as well. Another few known names in the prog world also make contributions to this album, with drummers Pat Mastelotto & Nick D’Virgilio adding their percussive talents too on individual numbers, Lloyd Landesman providing keys to one song, and one track that features a string arrangement from Dave Gregory. Yet this is hardly an album that is reliant on guests, because the main bulk of it has been undertaken by Randy McStine, with him providing all guitar and bass duties, all lead and backing vocals, as well as the majority of the keyboards & programming, and even drumming on one track.
Mutual Hallucinations is an eclectic mix of material. 4 of them are instrumentals, with the full album content not tending to stick in any particular genre at all, and they range in length from a mere 2 minutes through to one track that is around 9 and a half minutes long. I’ve no real reference for his music releases prior to this one, but by doing a bit research I see that he’s been involved with recording 8 albums across 4 different collaboration/band projects, as well as releasing 4 previous solo albums and couple of EPs, under his own name. So I’ve no real comparison here to any of his prior recording over the last 24 years, other than to say that from my own opinion, this album has the vibe of a musical sketchbook. It doesn’t feel that is has a strongly defined musical direction, other than to be a collection of song ideas that have originated over a 5 year time period, and that have now been fleshed out and fully realised. Not that this is a bad thing at all. Yet with it being fairly diverse, then there’ll likely be some songs that click with people straight away, and yet for others might miss the mark somewhat.
So from the outset, I wrongly assumed that this album would be predominantly guitar orientated. It’s not like that at all. Randy McStine is a great all-rounder as a musician. As such, the focus is on producing great well-written music, without the need to show off a particular talent, or their incredible dexterity on a instrument, etc. Overall, this has made for a very refreshing listening experience. It’s gorgeously produced as well. As mentioned previously, Steven Wilson handles the mixing duties on half this album, with 4 tracks mixed by Tim Palmer and 1 by Nicholas Morrow, yet all of them sound extremely good. You definitely get the feeling that a lot of time & love has gone into this album from Randy himself, with him providing all the various vocals and the majority of instrumentation. Structuring the tunes, engineering his own recordings, pondering over lyrical content, and so forth, it’s definitely been a genuine labour of love. Yet I think he should be very proud of the final results, because Mutual Hallucinations contains a fine selection of songs, featuring great performances, and beautifully finished off with some top-notch production work.
The opening number on the albums is the marvellously quirky instrumental, Bodies In Space. It’s such a short tune, yet during its brief 2 minutes running time it has this lovely bouncy happy vibe to it. It’s actually the track on this album that I have played the most, in fact many, many times. I find it quite an addictive tune. And I really like the fact that it’s placed as the very the first track, because straight away it informs the listener to be prepared for anything to happen on this musical journey. I also like this one in particular as it reminds me of Todd Rundgren during his early 80’s solo period. And my only possible criticism of this track is that, for me, it’s too short. There are such great hooks in this tune, that it could have easily been double the length and not outstayed it’s welcome. Counterintuitive is the first track to feature lead vocals, and Randy has a really good voice. It’s an acoustic led song, with the verses having that lovely slight dissonance featured in acoustic Chris Cornell/Jimmy Page tunes. This is such a contrast to the first song, yet the quality of it and attention to detail are just as impressive. Once again, it’s a relatively short number, at around 2 and a half minutes long.
Adopted Son is a much slower paced song, and definitely more of a singer-songwriter composition. The verses are really pretty, with a more powerful chorus when it finally arrives. I keep hearing echoes of Frank Zappa’s Water-Melon In Easter Hay, with reference to the main two repeating chords. It’s lovely to listen to in a very dreamy manner. Track number 4 is Send Your Light, which starts off with some cool synth noises & pulses accompanied by some really tasty layered vocals. It’s around this time that I heard similarities in his voice style & tone that’s not too dissimilar to Neal Morse, which trust me, is absolutely meant as a compliment. As the song progresses there’s some great drumming from Marco Minnemann, and later on some classy slide guitar sounds from Randy. It’s another great song, which so far is 4 out of 4 hitting the mark with my own musical tastes & preferences.
Unfortunately it’s the next song, Economy Of Differences, where I start to feel slightly disconnected from the music. Clocking in at nine and a half minutes, it is the longest song on Mutual Hallucinations. It’s also the slowest number on the album, which is pretty much at a crawling pace. His voice sounds marvellous, and his falsetto which only occurs 3 times, sounds highly impressive. Yet for me, the song never really goes anywhere, and could have easily been wrapped up after about 6 minutes. The contrast between the first 2 brief numbers, and then this particular one that takes up 25% of the full album running time … is quite vast. And bizarrely the next track is another 2 minute short instrumental number titled Bask. This is quite a dreamy little ditty, with a very nice string arrangement on it, and sounding like something from a movie score. It’s a slow grower for me, but after playing it through quite a few times, I started to appreciate it all the more.
The Scroll is the next track, which is another instrumental, yet I find this particular one way more interesting. There’s a lot going on though-out it , and in some brief sections I’m sure that there’s a tip of the hat to both Joe Satriani with the opening melody line, and Steve Vai, with certain selected chord changes, and perhaps on some of the small guitar flourishes too. At one point there’s even some organ parts that are straight out of the Keith Emerson handbook of song-writing. I’d easily say that this is probably the most prog-sounding track on the album, as there is so much to it, with so many different changes and phrases to the music. It also features some great drumming from Big Big Train’s Nick D’Virgilio, and I could happily listen to this over & over again, and still find something new within it all. This is track that is worth spending time with.
And even though I really liked the last track, it is in fact the next number, Impossible Door, which is my absolute favourite on the entire album. The main reason for this is that Jellyfish are one of my favourite bands of all-time, and this song so reminds me are their masterful song-crafting skills. I love how it starts off with a filter on the sound to give it that low-fi audio vibe during the first verse. Than clears up for the second verse to hear it in its full splendour. The choruses are just as well-written as the verses, and match up perfectly. His voice on this does have those Andy Sturmer style, vocal melody lines to it, which again is a huge compliment from me. Randy actually plays drums on this track as well, showing that he truly is a multi-talented all-round musician. I love this song so much, and have played it so many times. It jumped right out at me the very first time I heard it, as it couldn’t possibly be more suited to my own tastes. So much so that I had to grab a guitar and figure out all those acoustic chords, as it’s simply a marvellous tune to strum along to.
The next track is the 4th and final of Randy McStine’s instrumental numbers. This one is titled Incandescent, and is split into three sections. It’s quite an ambient sounding tune, which is totally keyboard orientated, with some very well chosen sounds, some cool sound design going on too, and assisted by Adam Holzman on the final section of it. Ambient tracks have never really been my thing, so from the outset, this particular tune was never going to really win me over. But I do appreciate it for what it is, and it does sound very nice on the ears when listening to it. The closing song on this album is Remains. Out of all the tracks on the collection, this probably sounds the closest to having modern pop elements, yet is a lot tastier in content. I like the total drop-out around 2 thirds through the song, and then kicking back in with a guitar solo. It’s another tune that isn’t instantly grabbing you, but definitely grows on you the more you get to hear it.
As I mentioned earlier on, this album casts it’s net very wide across many musical genres, and as such it’s very difficult for these highly varied 10 tracks to have the exact same kind of appeal across them all, for any potential listeners. So for me personally, some didn’t stand out as much. But there was enough there, a good 2 thirds of it, for me to really enjoy, and also make me want to check out some of Randy’s McStine’s other work too. In particular his McStine & Minnemann collaborations, which has produced 2 albums so far, with a third in the pipeline to be released sometime next year. Randy is also featured on the up’n’coming next Steven Wilson album, The Overview. This next release will feature 2 long tracks that are around 21 minutes each, and Randy has contributed guitar to the 2nd of these songs. For a relatively young man aged 36, he’s certainly had a very active career so far. Mutual Hallucinations is well worth investigating, and if I was scoring it out of 10, it would get a solid 7.5.
TRACK LISTING
01. Bodies In Space (2:01)
02. Counterintuitive (2:33)
03. Adopted Son (4:16)
04. Send Your Light (4:28)
05. Economy Of Differences (9:29)
06. Bask (2:08)
07. The Scroll (5:33)
08. Impossible Door (3:51)
09. Incandescent (5:18)
10. Remains (3:59)
Total Time – 43:44
MUSICIANS
Randy McStine – Lead & Backing Vocals, Guitars (Electric, Acoustic & Electric Sitar), Ukulele, Bass, Keyboards, Drums, Drum Programming, Percussion
~ With:
Pat Mastelotto – Drums & Percussion (2)
Gavin Harrison – Drums (3)
Tim Palmer – Additional Percussion, Additional Guitar (4,5 & 10)
Marco Minnemann – Drums, Glockenspiel (4 & 10)
Adam Holzman – Keyboards (5 & 9)
String Quartet
– Johanna Morunov – Violin (6)
– Marcella Trentacosti – Violin (6)
– Derek Reeves – Viola (6)
– Deborah Nitka Hicks – Cello (6)
Nick D’Virgilio – Drums (7)
Lloyd Landesman – Additional Keyboards (7)
John Kanazawich – Keyboards (10)
ADDITIONAL INFO
Record Label: Independent
Country of Origin: U.S.A.
Date of Release: 1st November 2024
LINKS
Randy McStine – Website | Facebook | Bandcamp | YouTube | Instagram