“If someone’s wearing a mask, he’s gonna tell you the truth.” – Bob Dylan, Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story. Music has a long history of masked performers. Many have hidden themselves behind face paint and alter egos, blurring the line between person and artist and creating critical distance for their message to bloom. Dylan himself knew better than most the impact myth-making could have on one’s audience and art, but for pianist and instrumental songwriter Lambert, a Sardinian bull mask gives him something else, something he’s craved since he first started writing songs – freedom. Freedom to play a role, to be someone else, and to fully unleash his creative powers. “Everyone plays a role,” he argues. “So how do you even define ‘authentic artist’, or what is ‘true’?”

The album is inspired by the notion of true versus false. What is true and what is false, and how do we make such judgements? Such issues reflect our post-truth society, where opinions are conflated with facts and many cling blindly to beliefs even when confronted with cold, hard evidence. “Nobody really knows anymore,” says Lambert. “Especially with the internet.”

“In music, truth and falsehood is different than when you talk about facts in politics, or in the media,” he explains. “In those worlds, there are no ‘alternative facts’, but with music you have to rethink this concept, because it opens up to give different truths to different people. My associations and feelings towards a song can be completely different to yours, but both are equally valid; for me, it’s the truth, for you, it might not be. So the only real truth is the listener’s perspective.” As such, Lambert invites you to listen deeply, and draw your own conclusions about what he’s trying to communicate.

Lambert is a singular talent whose bold vision and compositional flair is informed as much by pop music and wider culture as it is by any classical repertoire. From 2017’s stunning Sweet Apocalypse, a masterful collection of orchestral works concerned with locating moments of beauty amid the dystopian future humanity is fast racing towards, to this year’s haunting, delicate Alone EP, Lambert has created his own, spellbinding sonic language that stirs the soul and inspires the mind. By turns hypnotic, sombre, and enchanting, he excels at creating moods and mesmerizing the listener; a deep sense of drama often gives way to an enigmatic playfulness, colourful melodies skipping lightly through his songs. What’s clearly beyond doubt is that with True Lambert has created a truly astonishing and breathtaking record. See a full list of tour dates at listentolambert.com/2.