SS Puft and Georgian Contemporary Unit bass player Erik Hinds delivered his first solo album in 2001. Cerebus is everything a solo effort should be, especially a first one: scaled-down, intimate, short, and...solo. It gives the listener a chance to enter the artist's personal sound world. Hinds went for the lo-fi, direct-to-tape technique. Sound quality is good; occasional mistakes in the playing convey the human touch. He performs nine short pieces on guitar, one-holer, banjo, and the H'arpeggione, which sounds like an expanded upright bass (the picture on the back cover hints at 18 strings). Fellow SS Puft guitarist Colin Bragg performs a tenth track, Hinds' composition "Three-Headed Monster." With hints of folk and bluegrass, this album is rooted in Americana but takes a subtle contemporary direction. The guitarist is not experimenting for experimentation's sake. Whenever he chooses an atonal route or offers an unorthodox chord sequence, it is done with such lack of pretension that it sounds very natural. This kind of album can become self-congratulatory, but at 31 minutes, Hinds sure did not get over-confident. Each piece gets to the point quickly, but the whole doesn't feel rushed. On the contrary, the listener is in for a comfortable, lazy ride. Some people may find Cerebus too light an artistic proposition -- but just compare it to the acoustic solo albums of Steve Howe or Steve Hackett.