Jon Collin - Peugeot 205

Cassette
Outstanding though strangely low-key Jon Collin collection released midway through 2023 that only managed to make its way through the shop door as 2023 drew to a close. It's mystifying as to why this one was so undersold on first release (or perhaps i just missed it?), more unusual still it's been limited to cassette. Written to compliment an edition of Maximilian Rossner's photo zine, RALLYE, Peugeot 205 is, somewhat confusingly, said to act as a series of "metaphors for a happening in- and outside of awareness", and named so because of the musical experiences Collin shared in the car of the same name back in the 80s and 90s. Not sure i'm capable of processing exactly what all that means, but what i do know is that this is some typically masterful playing and arrangement from JC, favouring the guitar-based blues primitivism for which the Early Music catalogue is perhaps best renowned, and adding in a uniquely haunting sense of pathos, the droning six string simultaneously nostalgic and melancholic in such a way to require some unknown German word to describe it - does weltschmerz cover it? Sometimes the words let us down, something Collin perhaps knows best when leaving them out entirely.