Mike Johnson - 2026 - The Gardens Of Loss

(45:57; Cuneiform Records)

Mike Johnson will always be associated with the band he co-founded more than 40 years ago, the hugely influential Thinking Plague, so why pick 2026 to release his first ever solo album? The reason was that he wanted to do something which was deliberately more orchestral, using real musicians as opposed to sampling, and felt the name Thinking Plague may be too restrictive (which is quite a statement given just how groundbreaking they have been over the years). The result is a hugely expansive release which features performances by 19 musicians, some based in the States (Johnson, several Thinking Plague alumni, and more) while other are in Canada (Kimara Sajn), Portugal (Nuno Mourão), Spain (Pau Sola Masafrets), Sweden (Simon Steensland, Morgan Ågren) and The Netherlands (Oene van Geel, Pablo Rodriguez, César Puente Sandoval, George Dumitriu).

The result is something which will of course be closely linked to Thinking Plague given it is such a core part of Johnson’s identity, but here it has been combined with modern classical avant garde to create something which is truly an amalgam of both. This takes guitars, lap steels, fiddle, fretless banjo, sampler-synthesizer programming and "pencil guitars", bass, drums and percussion, piano, vocals, flute, oboe, English horn, bassoon, clarinets, bass clarinet, alto saxophone, trumpet, trombone, violin, viola, cello and double bass and somehow brings them all together in a such a manner that they all make sense and one cannot imagine the album without all of them working together. The scoring and orchestration must have been a huge piece of work for Johnson, but the result is certainly worth it as here we have an album which is true to RIO, eclectic and modern, yet somehow it all makes sense and when one has played it a few times it is remarkable at just how melodic and beautiful this is. This is not an album which is immediately easy listening, but gradually one realises this is a significant release which builds on what Johnson has undertaken previously but he is now moving in a slightly different direction. Does this mean that Thinking Plague is over and we will get more albums like this one? I don’t have the answer to that but am sure Johnson’s adventures still have a long way to go and based on this whatever is next will be hugely exciting. For fans of the unusual, where the word “progressive” truly does mean just that. 

Kev Rowland, May 2026

Links:
http://www.cuneiformrecords.com/