I was first introduced to instrumental artist Patrick O’Hearn through my brother Dw. by a cassette he happened to be playing one day in the car which would turn out to be O’Hearn’s 1991 release Indigo. Beautiful World is his fourteenth release and ninth studio album since leaving the band Missing Persons in the 1980s to pursue a solo career. He has also released two motion picture soundtracks, two best-of albums and a remix album.

Indigo, as well as its successors, Trust (1995) and Metaphor (1996), incorporated a number of guest musicians providing everything from guitars to saxophones to Turkish drums. Here, only longtime contributor Peter Maunu appears, offering a smattering of 6 and 12 string guitars. The rest is all O’Hearn.

Beautiful World is clearly more ambient and understated than earlier releases. Where it seemed those were more melody driven and had a lot more going on in the background, this album for the most part keeps the compositions a lot simpler and up front. So, the question is, is one approach better than the other? I guess it depends on what mood you’re in at the time.

While I still greatly enjoy Indigo and the others, and will long continue to do so, there is a welcome sense of openness in O’Hearn’s recent music (which for me includes his 2001 album So Flows the Current) that didn’t seem as prevalent in earlier works. Every note seems to languidly fall into the next, allowing the listener to just as languidly wrap themselves into the songs and attempt to experience the scenes the titles represent. “An Evening Sky” feels like the musical interpretation of looking up at an inky black vista with a thousand stars to light one’s way, “Chance”, with its spacey keystrokes that stretch over the horizon sends a number of eerily beautiful images to your mind’s eye and the subtle yet incredibly moving eleven-minute opus “Approaching Summit” gives the mental imprint of being at the very top of some unbelievably high plateau, staring down in disbelief at the vastness of the world below.

Ultimately, Beautiful World is an album one probably needs to be in a specific mood to listen to, perhaps even more so than many of O’Hearn’s previous works. Songs take their sweet old time developing but, when in the proper mindset, most will welcome the long, lingering builds and consume each and every delicate note. It really is a beautiful album, we just need to slow down enough to appreciate it.