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“The Backward Sound of Wiltshire”- The Rowe Brothers
“The Willy Wonka of Record Production”- Holly Partridge
“ Wiltshire’s answer to Andy Warhol’s Factory” -BBC Wiltshire
“The world’s best producer- The Alfonz
"Not lame"- Jen Olive
"Magnificent electro-swamp-blues-opera-hiphop-mashup"- Sam Bates
"The Wizard of Odds"- Andy Partridge
“Trying to categorize Lighterthief is like trying to nail smoke to a wall. Not only do they resist being put into a genre, even the very nature of the band is difficult to easily describe. A one-man studio project that occasionally manifests itself as a extended band? Fluid and largely improvised songs that are formed around rigid technology and samples? Techno-grunge meets the blues? Down-beat, trip-rock? Ask twenty people what it is that Stuart Rowe’s highly original creation is and you will get twenty answers. “ Dave Franklin
“Lighterthief doesn’t venture on to the stage that often, but when it does , it is an unpredictable and wonderful work of art. The line-up is slightly different every time, as are the songs and even the arrangements. The music is a strange brew of dark, trip-rock, swamp-blues and organic sounds, which combines consummate musicianship with an outstanding technical wizardry.” - Swindon Shuffle Review
“In 2007 the album Incubation was launched on an unsuspecting audience, an album that managed to blend music without regard for genre or rules. Metal guitars vied for space with melancholy harmonicas, whilst lonely trumpets muscled their way through. Loops and strange effects seemed to wander unchallenged across the songs, magical female vocals competed for space alongside gruff, rasping male voices, and intricate basslines and hypnotic percussion cemented the whole thing together.”
“If you look up eclectic in the dictionary, it has a picture of the Lighterthief’s album, Incubation, a diverse and heady mix of grunge blues guitar, soul pounding bass, electronic loops and beats and vocals that cover such a wide range that you could fit a small African country in between them.”
“Like all of the best music, its difficult to pin down exactly what it is that they do. Underpinned by an almost Portishead-esque series of dark loops and beats, layers of seemingly incompatible genres are added, thick swamp blues guitar licks, spiralling strains of dirty saxophone, random electronica, wailing freight train harmonica, driving bass lines, off beat jazz and more besides, creating an inconceivable yet beautiful creation. Look up juxtaposition in the dictionary and it has a video of this gig.”
"More akin to falling down the rabbit hole than anything else I've ever heard"- Jo Bradley
