On the Horizon: A Soaring Victory for the Sombre, Sam Cleeve.

The moment I first immersed myself in Birmingham home composer Sam Cleeve's Hubrix a gelid shudder rippled up my spine as every poorly maintained body hair stood and quivered. The effect may only convincingly be compared with that evoked when I first experienced the orchestral majestics of Dustin O'Halloran and indeed the initially sombre solemnities to Hubrix prove subtly redolent of A Winged Victory For The Sullen at their most emotive, quietened strings hushing a trickling ebb of the most mellow piano. Like a dull toothache it's glum, dolorous stuff although as is the sugared freeze to have induced such pain, it's sweet as anything. That it then blows a proverbial vessel and bursts open in a quite Reichian pulse as it builds to crescendo – clots of rhythm and drone suffused throughout its closing moments – renders Cleeve's proficiency, precision and musical poise all the more incontestable. We've a prodigious wunderkind in our midst.

Mercifully there to pick up the smithereened pieces of already smattered emotion is the wholesome, almost Thomas Adès-esque serenity to Squint: a revelation of a subdued sonata, it's a slowly blossoming specimen of utmost beauty; the logical soundtracking to a newborn being exposing its eyes from the relative safety of sealed lids for the very first time. Staggeringly exquisite in every possible respect.

Sam Cleeve's Soundcloud.