El McMeen "Dancing the Strings", 2004
El McMeen's love affair with Motown continues on his latest solo guitar release
"Dancing the Strings". His last record, "Breakout", gave us just one medley of
Motown tunes played with surprising aplomb on solo guitar, a taste of McMeen's growing
appetite to venture outside the walls of traditional music. This CD is a mix of that
Motown vibe, McMeen's longtime devotion to Celtic melodies on solo steel string guitar,
and a few other dance tunes. It's an ambitious project, and McMeen pulls it off with
some excellent results. As usual, McMeen's tone - using CGDGAD tuning - is excellent.
He really nails the driving rhythm of bass lines with the melody riding over top. Some
of these traditional pieces are technically challenging -- the modulation of "The Humors
of Ballyloughlin", the undulating emotions of "The Kid on the Mountain", and the gymnastic
O'Carolan jig "Hugh O'Donnell". McMeen demonstrates his strength in that idiom on each
tune. From Motown, McMeen serves up glistening renditions of "Tears of a Clown", and
"Working My Way Back to You", bringing us back to AM radio of the 1960's. On both tunes,
McMeen uses various techniques of hammer-ons, pull-offs, and other twists to create that
funky drive we all love in those songs. The disk finishes with a sweet cover of "America
the Beautiful", a tune McMeen says in the liner notes, "We can slow dance to the song that
could be our national anthem". This is a fine disk of really great solo guitar music.
©
Kirk Albrecht
Axel Schultheiss "Departure", 2002
This is not any run-of-the-mill fingerstyle. Axel Scultheiss' compositions are recounted
with layered, complementary and zigzagging multitracked guitar lines, and can't quite be
called melodies so much as dramas. "Departure" rings out like peals of church bells,
intense and omniscient. "Strung Up" is like a swarm-like buzz of attack punctuated by
the metronomic drone of boxcars on tracks gleefully winding their way over hill and dale.
©Alan Fark
Mark Lane "Golden State of Mind" 2003
"Golden State of Mind" hearkens back to the heady days of the 60's and the creativity
of artists like the Beatles and Brian Wilson. They produced layers of sound that
belied the limits of the available recording technology. "Golden State of Mind"
is largely a homespun, self-produced affair, with Lane playing a variety of
instruments, as well as writing, recording, arranging and producing. And, though
there are highs and lows, all thirteen songs burst with ideas both referential and
reverent. You'll hear touches of Lennon, Harrison (almost every guitar lead),
Brian Wilson, and even a dash of Motown. The album is highlighted by two standout
tunes "Enough to Go Around" and "The One You Waited For" and a sense of fun and
discovery that means a good time is guaranteed for all.
©
David Kleiner
David Pritchard "Velocity" 2003
Surface, depth, flow, spatiality, minimal difference... These are some of the terms and
phrases that begin to describe the compositional texture of David Pritchard’s inventive
and timely music. His newest installment of what might be best defined as "minimalism
for the guitar" seems to make explicit reference to the work of Phillip Glass,
though I would not suggest confining Prichard’s music to Glass' "style". On this CD one
finds four guitars played by David Pritchard, Jack Majdecki, Ken Rosser, Adam Castillo,
and David Johnson respectively. Their playing lights up the musical experience, each one
present to articulate a different register of the same melody. Pritchard is truly onto
something here as the guitar makes a perfect medium for just this type of deployment of
sound, rhythm, and harmony. To put it in more metaphysical terms, the compositions
contain a kind of signature of the timeless presentness in everyday life. On "Round
Trip", for example, the listener is taken into a harmonic environment of continual
progression toward the beginning, as it were. Truly some of the most beautiful
music I’ve ever heard.
©
Bernard Richter
Art Turner "Jade", 2003
Art Turner's passionate approach to the guitar has been described as "aboriginoceltic
fingerstyle worldfolk." "Jade", his first solo guitar album, is a very satisfying effort.
The opening track, "Dragondance," typifies his approach, which is full of percussive
effects (although sometimes at the expense of melody) and themes that evoke western
landscapes. Turner chooses his influences well; his own "Berkeley Springs" recalls
Ed Gerhard, while two other pieces, "Good Hands" and "The Lone Ranger and Tonto
Fistfight in Heaven," show similarities to Peter Finger. To my ears, the weakest
number is a recreation of Gerhard's arrangement of "Si Bhig, Si Mohr," which
ultimately shows that Turner is at his best when performing his own compositions,
rather than closely emulating someone else. Art Turner's reputation is growing
rapidly in Canada, and he's likely to gain a wider audience with this disc.
©
Pat Ragains
Steve Klingaman "Vanishing Point", 2003
Steve Klingaman thoughtfully explores the vagaries, injustices and joys of
romance on his second CD, "Vanishing Point". In the aching title track, he
writes, "Whenever I look into your eyes, I see the emptiness inside me... it’s
just the vanishing point of love". Klingaman follows this theme from the other
side of the equation in "Sooner or Later": "You’ll need me and if you don’t,
it will tear me apart". The singer/songwriter/guitarist bares his emotions
like a 100-watt bulb searing a stark room without a lampshade. The 11 tracks
lyrically unfold like chapters, tracing the agonies of a no-longer-young man
wrestling with life in the no-longer-fast lane -- but Klingaman too often fails to
convey musically what is spelled out so literally in his lyrics. Musically,
Jesse Winchester’s "Isn’t That So" emerges as the strongest track. Klingaman
traded performing several years ago for the comfort of his own recording
studio. His daughter joins him on vocals on this disc.
©
Fred Kraus
John McKone "Times Too", 2003
Whether he's aggressively tapping and slapping intricate, syncopated, Hedges-style
new-age groove or fingerpicking a thoughtful, pensive ballad, John McKone's guitar
sounds huge. Rarely does naked guitar sound this warm and full of life. The songs on
"Times Too" are a collection of meditations on places in time and the pace of life.
From the hurried and frantic "Thirteenth Hour", to the bittersweet disappointment of
"Too Late", McKone paints an honest picture that accepts and embraces these disparate
emotions. Wearing his soul on his sleeve, John McKone connects with his instrument
and listeners on a level that transcends the everyday and brings the ethereal to light.
© Rick Gebhard
Ozella Music Various Artist Compilation "Morning", 2003
This disc could have been entitled "Magical Mystery Tour", much more aptly than the Beatles
record. This Ozella Music compilation of new-age and contemplative acoustic pieces is
indeed magical, mysterious. Dagobert Boehm has a producer's knack for bringing together
like-minded guitarists to craft a seamless volume of atmospheric meditations which plumb
for the profound. I've never before heard acoustic guitars recorded with this degree of
sparkling crispness.
©
Alan Fark
Joe Finn Quartet "Destiny Blue", 2003
Joe Finn can bop. The blue notes fly fervently from his fretboard nimbly, linearly as
from a saxophone. Indeed, some of the "cookin-ist" numbers on this disc were laid down
first by sax greats Charlie Parker and Wayne Shorter... it's hard to identify a guitarist
who may have influenced Finn's style but perhaps easier to hear in his lines a handful
of horn players who may have done so. On the one original tune of the CD (also the title
track), he does tip his hat to The Thumb, using octaves to slow things to a smolder.
©
Alan Fark
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