Description
Close is guitarist Steve Tibbetts’ first studio album in seven years. From the very beginning he’s mapped out a distinctly individual, idiosyncratic approach in melding jazz, psychedelic rock, world musics, folk music, and technologies. After two independent releases — including Yr — he signed with ECM and in 1982 issued the unfairly criticized ambient guitar masterpiece Northern Song using acoustic guitars, kalimba, tape loops, and Marc Anderson’s organic percussion. Since then, he’s continued to weave sonic skyscapes by threading electric and acoustic music on groundbreaking titles that include Exploded View, Big Map Idea, the iconic Chö in collaboration with Tibetan Buddhist nun Choying Drolma, and 2018’s Life Of. Close seemingly springs directly from Northern Song yet embraces the sounds, rhythms, spaces, and textures of his entire career. It is easily Tibbetts’s most intimate outing.Accompanied by Anderson and drummer JT Bates, the guitarist delivers three multi-part cuts as well as several thematically related tracks. In an essay, he states that, “Music is as close to magic as we mortals have … Music is a twilight language. The job is to translate some shadow into sound.” That’s exactly what happens across these 20 tracks. The three-part opener “We Begin” clocks in at 11 minutes. The brief first section offers deep sound opening the atmosphere. “Part 2” uses the original drone effect to create a sonorous wonderland of sinuous, amplified 12-string guitar amid trancelike, looped, atmospheric hand percussion. “Part 3” emerges with the original drone opening onto a speculative guitar song that reflects mystery in its gradual exposition. The tripartite “Away” uses similar motifs, but in a nearly song-like construction with bleeding acoustic guitars, hovering percussion, and space. The two-part “Remember” uses gently overdubbed guitar parts and frames a melody that never quite emerges; it’s supported by restrained percussion. The ten-minute second section uses distorted guitars and amplification atop fat hand drums and cymbals as Tibbetts explores a labyrinth with long, bent string utterances. The economical, dreamy “Somewhere” introduces more rhythmic and dynamic complexity. Its reliance on droning psych and distortion is maximized as drums frame the sound of his amp exploding after 4:06 in the third section amid his loping modal melodies. It sets up the interlude “Anywhere” played on deeply resonant acoustic guitar with a barely whispering piano and bassline. In turn, it introduces the five-part, 11-plus-minute “Everywhere” wherein loops, drums, and layered, detailed, distorted abstraction are cradled together. “Remember And,” and “Remember and Wish” are hushed guitar pieces evoking a bygone spirit in the gently abstracted ether. In 93 seconds, closer “We End” signifies that there are no real endings; the album, and the stories and sounds it carries, could easily commence in a rounded loop that opens its creative circle wider.Close is (mostly) gentle in its sophisticated, meditative articulation. That said, the taut rumbling drums and barely restrained distortion in places lets the listener know that this set based in reverie could just have easily roared. ~ Thom Jurek
