Everything I’ve ever written about any album, concert or piece of music is wrong.

I know this because of something that happened while I was quietly listening to ‘Arc Of Crows’ by pianist Robert Haigh, a track taken from his new album Black Sarabande, at the weekend while reorganising my loft. The experience was a poignant one in more ways than one, but not because of the crawling around on my knees sorting out boxes; that was just painful.

‘Arc Of Crows’ is an arresting, quiet, delicate piece of piano music nodding gently and reverently in the direction of Satie and it immediately stopped me in my tracks, a box of Christmas decorations in hand, and I found myself standing there for the entirety of its three minutes and forty-eight second duration, in that brief passage of time contemplating everything I have ever done, everything I have ever hoped for, the highs, the lows, the disappointments, the missed opportunities, the what-ifs, the future – the lot.

It very possibly had the profoundest effect on me that any piece of music has had or will ever have. Possibly this was owing to its sparseness, being simply Haigh’s piano accompanied by a soft, imperceptible sound in the background, somewhere between a brushed cymbal, muted traffic noise or a curtain of rain; or possibly because of its textures, its hidden depths and its delicate, resolute, outline.

Toward the end of my immersion in my thoughts, my teenage daughter arrived in the room in which the loft happens to be, and visibly and audibly recoiled at Haigh’s piece. She complained of it making her feel claustrophobic, panicked, uncomfortable and very possibly called it ‘weird’ (both of my daughters call all of the music I listen to ‘weird’, incidentally). She was still griping about it over lunch the next day. I’m at a loss to understand what it is that she heard that I didn’t, what quality it was that I found mesmerising but which she found anxiety-inducing.

Hence my conclusion that you can’t trust anything I write. Read on at your peril.

The reason Black Sarabande might have got me in a contemplative mood is possibly because it finds Haigh ruminating on his own life, specifically his childhood in the mining village of Worsbrough in South Yorkshire; his father was a miner and his early years were spent among the strange culture clash between the vestiges of the Victorian Industrial Age and the rural hills and dales through which progress had permanently left its mark.

That tension can be be found mournfully lurking in pieces like ‘Stranger On The Lake’ or ‘Ghosts Of Blacker Dyke’, not in an air of machine-driven harshness but just a sort of echo of one; little sounds drift in and out of view, sometimes melodically, sometimes as what could be a distant train clattering on its tracks, sometimes as unidentifiable noises with a brittle edge as if broken forcibly from something else, leaving only a vague impression of what was there before. Other pieces, like the genteel arpeggios of ‘Progressive Music’ are simply unadorned moments of intense wonder, like a hopeful sunrise on a frosty morning, full of promise and serenity and freighted with a welcome, disarming clarity.

Black Sarabande by Robert Haigh is released January 24 2020 by Unseen Worlds.

(c) 2020 Further.