Last evening disks... David Grubbs - "An Optimist Notes the Dusk" and Peter Blegvad & Ian Partridge - "Orpheus - The Lowdown"

My recent exposure to "Gastr del Sol" music brought me to my friend Daniele's CD-R of David Grubbs' "An Optimist..."

Must admit I'm not a lover of "copies" or downloads... I'm an old-timey cat: when I like something I buy it, as my disc-pusher - Ivan - well knows...

Nonetheless, I had this cheap CD-R by David Grubbs Daniele gave to me weeks ago... "Give a listen!"... and humble like only a CD-R in a plastic-bag can be, I simply left it unlistened on a shelf...

Yesterday evening, after dinner, I reached my studio and turned ON only the Thomas Mayer VT-25A line-stage and power-amps... browsed among disk and was attracted by... well, you got it;-)

... and I put it on the Studer and... WOW!

A plain, slightly distorted electric guitar, but played in a "non-style" similar to last John Fahey's Telecaster era... and a voice almost naked, straight like an arrow and a dark, burnished atmosphere which was soooo "right" for my evening listening.

I listened to Grubbs' disk in one uninterrupted shot... and like I entered an alternate-world path, I felt ready for "Orpheus - The Lowdown" by Peter Blegvad and Ian Partrdidge... this disk truly is a weapon: the (extremely low frequency) skin of drums on "Galveston", the guitars and loops and voices and texts on "Noun Verbs"... ALL is weird and seldom heard.



No words are able to describe the effect which these two disks together left on yours truly... when I turned OFF my music system and walked home... I felt like a stranger in a strange world.

Powerful stuff, indeed...