Search - Steffen Basho-Junghans :: Late Summer Morning

"Junghans' solo acoustic pieces, written for both six and twelve-stringed instruments, are nothing if not deeply bound to the earth. He's so sure-fingered on the fretboard that it frequently sounds like there are two or three people picking away at the steel string, but it's always just him and his craft, which by this point he's completely mastered ... solo acoustic music doesn't get much better than this." -- PITCHFORK "With a technique that mixes the sound of his predecessors with a more forward-looking (and sounding) arsenal of experimental methods and concepts, Steffen Basho-Junghans continues to be a leading voice in modern acoustic guitar music." -- DUSTED "[Steffen Basho-Junghans] works his newly discovered modes and styles into a convincing and highly personal vocabulary." -- THE WIRE By every account, Steffen Basho-Junghans is a true master of the acoustic steel string guitar. As a player, composer, scholar, teacher and trailblazer, no living player has a resume as vast as he, nor has anyone so bravely and diligently challenged the tradition by pushing it radically forward. Over the course of nearly thirty years, Basho-Junghans has released fourteen albums, founded festivals and taught seminars, and claims the most thorough archives on the planet of his mentor, the late Robbie Basho. On his many albums, Basho-Junghans has composed music steeped in the classic Takoma Records sound and revolving around Basho's American Raga music, but he has also forged concepts based on unabashed experimentation that have pushed the limits of the acoustic guitar into alien arenas. Through it all, Basho-Junghans has secured his own distinct language, one that often speaks many dialects but is anchored in a clear vision of his own design. Multiple streams of singing steel have flowed across many landscapes, but with Late Summer Morning, Basho-Junghans guides a confluence of them all into one glimmering, gorgeous river of sound. Much in the vein of his pastoral epic Rivers and Bridges, Steffen Basho-Junghans harkens back to the heyday of American Primitive guitar, as defined by Robbie Basho and John Fahey circa Fare Forward Voyagers. The title track is an unabashedly beautiful extended composition for twelve-string guitar, stretching out languidly and effortlessly like a morning raga saturated in crisp, warming hues. With the steel string tradition as a steadfast reference point, Basho-Junghans utilizes unorthodox pacing, fingerpicking and rhythms as "Late Summer Morning" progresses. Themes of tone and minimalism are to be found, while glistening guitar lines wrap into circular patterns to create lovely trance-inducing color wheels. Basho-Junghans' ability to strike out into the unknown while keeping the sounds and tones grounded sets Late Summer Morning apart, something that is evident as multiple sound forms hit the ear with calming bliss. American folk and classical, East Indian Raga, Native American linearity, the resonance of Middle Eastern folk, and melodic Minimalism (i.e. Steve Reich) meld together in a fashion that is tremendously cinematic and vivid. Basho-Junghans has tethered his elaborate language into a pristine wedding of sound, resulting in what surely is the most actualized summation of his musical quest to date.