Divided into two sections, the first piece is a live recording taken from a 1998 concert in Olympia, WA. This date found New York's avant-garde blues abstractionist letting his solo electric guitar breathe a thin smoke of ambience over the room, subdued melodic interventions and resonant chord studies swelling up from the near silence. Waves of his signature lilting tone crest and fade away like subtle brush-strokes; his guitar motifs appear as merely accents on the silence. Part two is another live recording, this time made in New York in 1998, and is fittingly less nostalgic in its mood. The session results in the guitarist emulating a more urban noise that reflects the sounds of the city. Joined by bassist Mathew Heiner of free jazz group Test, the duo flirts with silence and nuance in a similar fashion to the first solo piece, though noisy crescendos unfold into deep psychedelic space, where blues is a melodic notion buried beneath growing feedback and noise. Never overindulgent, the guitarist sculpts even the bleakest of noise into eloquent improvisations, and allows a tranquil space to accent his more aggressive statements. ~ Skip Jansen, Rovi
