Australian Music Centre | Breaking sound barriers

Six years in the making, drawing on the sublime talents of 16 of Australia's finest jazz and classical musicians, Stuart Greenbaum's concept album, The Final Hour, arrives. It is Greenbaum's 8th solo album, recorded in high definition at 96k/24b and mastered at 96/32.

Co-produced with Melbourne composer-pianist Luke Howard, The Final Hour combines the western classical tradition with jazz, pop, electronica, sonic arts and minimalism to create a contemporary commentary on life and how we value time.

In the tradition of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells, Jean-Michel Jarre's Oxygene and Pat Metheny Group's The Way Up, Greenbaum's The Final Hour is a work for the ages.

This studio album has been crafted around an original text by Ross Baglin, with narration by John Stanton. Greenbaum writes: "I wanted to create a commentary about the perception of the passing of time in our modern new-millennial lives. Of how we value it. An hour of time (not just the final hour) and by extension, the duration of a life."

The Final Hour, as its title suggests, is precisely 60 minutes long (to the nanosecond). Oboe, saxophone and strings merge with analogue and digital synthesizers, keyboards, guitars, bass, drums and percussion. Poetry, trains and office soundscapes weave in and out of a mesmerizing, soulful musical narrative constructed in arch form around the Fibonacci series.

1. prelude (1 min) -- 2. pulse and presence (3 min) -- 3. memory jar (5 min) -- 4. speeding car (8 min) -- 5. fate (13 min) -- 6. city towers (13 min) -- 7. thistle seed (8 min) -- 8. stationary trains (5 min) -- 9. the atmosphere (3 min) -- 10. coda (1 min).