Wonderful words by the ever erudite Adam Turner.

Earlier this year Be With released Thought Leadership’s Ill Of Pentacles on vinyl and it sold out fairly quickly. Now they’re releasing the follow up, Ace Of Swords, on vinyl and I expect the same will happen. Ill Of Pentacles had been out on cassette and digitally since May 2024 but the vinyl release felt like a bit of an event, something Be With do very well. Somewhat stupidly, I missed out on the vinyl but you can’t have everything. Since then, Thought Leadership has released a third set of tracks, IV Of Cups, recorded in early summer this year

Thought Leadership is the alias of a reclusive guitarist living in Edgeley, Stockport, a part of the town that sits at the top of the hill overlooking the River Mersey. Stockport is very much a town in transition- it was referred to as ‘the new Berlin’ by Luke Unabomber – and there are things stirring in and around the centre: cafes and bars, record shops, summer street parties that close the roads, market halls and food halls.

Thought Leadership may or may not be part of this regeneration but his music resonates out of the place, echoing with the sound of 80s guitar heroes, people like Vini Reilly, Robin Guthrie and Felt’s Maurice Deebank. The first album, Ill Of Pentacles, had a very Durutti Column feel – the guitar and FX pedals, minimal drum machine backing, occasional synth accompaniment. It was full of minor chords and finger picking, filtered through chorus and echo pedals. It felt like a Manchester album.

Ace Of Swords is a bigger record. It sounds fuller and the tracks have been described (not inaccurately) by Be With as ‘Balearic Jazz’ The guitar / guitars are still the centre of the album but the bass and synths take up a bit more room and there’s a noticeable variation in tone. The tracks are numbered rather than titled, each represented by a Roman Numeral, XI through to XX, picking up where the first album left off. 

The opening number, XI, starts with bursts of synth and jazz chords, percussion and then some very bright foreground guitar, that previously mentioned Balearic jazziness in full effect.

XVII and XVIII are both beautiful, the emotional core of the record in some ways, back-to-back, weightlessness and drifting but heavy, touching, incredibly moving. The latter introducing itself with drones, the hum of electricity, taking a minute before the guitar joins in. The instrument looped, layered, one refrain and then another. A lead line then falling, slightly distorted, the different parts playing, weaving around each other.

XVII is a lost child of Vini Reilly – utterly lovely melancholic sequences, the pad of the drum machine just perceptible with notes caressed from the neck of the guitar.

The album ends with XX, a nine-minute abstract conclusion that builds slowly and crawls towards some fuzz, some squeals, some speaker shredding feedback and some theatrics, before sinking back into the bliss.

Thought Leadership’s Ace Of Swords can be ordered directly from Be With Records.

You can find more proper, on point, prose from Adam Turner over at his own brilliant blog, The Bagging Area. Adam is also part of the admin team at the mighty Flightpath Estate.