From Quagmire / Caught In Unknowing

Vhf

Working from Dorothy Geller's assured finger-picked and plucked nylon-string guitar, and James Wolf's elegant violin lines, From Quagmire explores a kind of hushed, terse chamber song that is so unlike anything else it's hard to draw comparisons. V2G2's unorthodox interruptions of sawing bowed guitar, free-"jazz" drumming, and other unlikely audio splatter is the wild card that keeps things from getting too austere. Usually it's totally beside the point, but it's worth mentioning that unlike most underground folk/outsider weirdness, the music here is superbly recorded in close-up detail.   The Tropic of Barren [presents] slowly unfolding songs that are full of mystery and suspense. "Suite of Windmill and Sycamore" open things with raw and bluesy guitar work played as if every note would be the last one ever played. In the distance a drone starts building up and unorthodox percussion jumps in and out of the speakers.... Dorothy Geller [known, along with From Quagmire violinist James Wolf, for work with chamber rock ensemble Laconic Chamber] plays the nylon string guitar throughout the whole record and it's truly spectacular in the sadly flowing "Suite of Atoms and Media." This drifts right into the aptly titled "Fragment of Watching," which veers off into a slightly more experimental neighborhood, but the nylon guitar just keeps on floating in profoundly sad sound structures as if nothing would have happened. On all six of The Tropic of Barren's tracks, there's space for every tone to breathe and every instrument to speak, resulting in a detailed sonic conversation that'll keep you going well into the endless night. --Mats Gustafsson, Broken Face   Seven tracks, 41 minutes, the second CD from completely original, terse chamber trio of Dorothy Geller, James Wolf, and V2G2 Detailed, high-quality recording that suits this superbly texturted material   

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