Future Suture

"There is nothing more refreshing than to enjoy what comes from Ned's own frame of mind, when no other in Australia even thinks the path Ned is walking down. His subtle ruby sounds will induce you into a coma that will leave you in a different world..."
- TheDwarf.com.au

Ned Collette has taken the quiet back road to a place some distance out from obscurity, heading at his own speed for a destination of his own choosing. That chosen road is without doubt a leafy and sun dappled one, and that destination pastoral and perhaps even a little bucolic. Ned may hint at a past age of music (Robert Wyatt, John Martyn, Brian Eno, Soft Machine, Jerry Garcia, Nick Drake) but he moves everything defiantly forward with his elaborate arrangements, slow building melodies, gradually revealed hooks, looped and layered guitar parts and optimistic yet world weary lyrics. And while everyone else seems to be shouting, Ned is singing.

'Future Suture' sees Ned recording in his own studio above a Chinese restaurant in Melbourne, producing the album with long time collaborator Joe Talia. With the passage of twelve months since his debut Ned's musical perspective has shifted.

Album opener "First Love" may start with simple acoustic guitar and vocals but this is just a departure point for the elaborate and profound journey to follow. "Sell Your Life" could have kicked its way down an autumnal laneway just outside of Canterbury in 1968. "Forty Children" sees Collette launch his attack on the last ten years of global "demockracy", and "Show Your Hand" furthers this theme, albeit with the specter of John Barry floating in the arrangement. "The Country With a Smile" rides softly rippling wave patterns that may have once emanated from Eno's green world, whilst "Winter Holiday" sees a return to affairs of memory and the heart, so present in the first album. "Ned's Dream" is a knowing, though darkly romantic, acknowledgment of Bob's, and the dying moments of "Lost and Found" play a wonderful musical joke on the song's final lyrics. "Race", finally, sees Collette step out to smash all preconceptions of him as some anti-rock dilettante, creating a solo that the old school term "axe hero" was coined for.