Album: Pat Metheny, Orchestrion (Nonesuch)

The guitarist's latest project, which he brings to London's Barbican on 10 February, is a meisterwerk or folie de grandeur according to taste.

Using the old idea of a multi-voiced mechanical music-machine – the orchestrion of the title – Metheny commissioned various scientists and engineers to create new instrumental hybrids and wrote a solo suite to showcase them. Of course, it all sounds exactly like the Pat Metheny we already know and love/hate.

The opening is great, but if you're not a fan the spell soon wears off.