May 06 2008 11:27 am,

Ray
‘Death In Fiction’
(Pito Records)
Singer Nev Bradford explains thus: “It’s not a concept album – it’s an album that happens to have a concept behind it.” With semantics like this, it’s hardly surprising this is no Ray of sunshine but rather a piece of musical rhetoric borne of MOR sub-Straits Dire-ness. Permeated by meandering, go-nowhere guitar breaks, ‘Death In Fiction’ feels like an improvised story with no structure that challenges mortality’s will. The Floydian atmospherics of ‘Roulette Sun’ occasionally employs said noodling guitarist’s fret-bound wanderlust to good effect, but this is small recompense for the tirade of aimlessness residing herein…
It’s not a shite album, you understand – it’s just an album that happens to have much botty leakage coming out of it.
Stephen Brolan

