The Climber is Judge’s second Songstory and is vocal music, sung by Judge and a male-voice choir, accompanied only by a Double Bass.

A British mountaineer tells of his first visit to an unnamed resort in the Italian Alps, for a climbing holiday, sometime in the mid-Twentieth Century. He is a repressed and lonely man whose passion is reserved for the solitude of the high alpine snowfields, and his romantic and emotional view of a mountain as something to be wooed and conquered, is contrasted with the pragmatic and matter-of-fact attitudes of the local community, represented by the Choir, for whom the mountains are simply beautiful but potentially dangerous places of work.

His priggishness and essential coldness are contrasted with the warmth and friendliness of the locals, and contrasts of warmth and coldness, both physical and emotional, form a continuing theme of the piece.

The Climber is not easy to describe. It’s neither ‘Classical Music’ nor ‘Easy-listening Choral Music’. Despite the absence of guitars and drums, Judge himself sees it as being another aspect of his kind of rock’n’roll, with its emphasis on big tunes and insistent rhythms. Like most of Judge’s music, it’s in a category of its own.

The Climber CD comes in a high-quality ‘Super Jewel Case’ with a twenty-page illustrated booklet which includes the full text, and, as a ‘Bonus Track’, the CD concludes with a six-minute audio ‘trailer’ for Judge’s next album, his third Songstory, ‘Orpheus’.