Throughout his 30-year-plus career, Scottish musician John Martyn had touched on an eclectic range of sounds and styles. His continuous work in the jazz, blues, folk and rock fields has resulted in some fantastic music though, somehow, Martyn never really got his full props. The title track on Solid Air is a tribute song to his then depressed friend Nick Drske, which immediately lends a sentimental streak to the LP. The rest of the album reveals its charms in a respectful manner, slowly but surely crystallising much of his earlier work into a coherent yet diverse whole. Using his soft, almost whispery vocal style and gifted guitar phrasing as connecting threads throughout the LP, Martyn offers up a sprawling mesh of dark blues, progressive electric guitar, deep, tribal rock and lighter jazz to make what was one of the biggest benchmark albums of his career.