Double LP
The NTS label arm antes up again in the comp game with this latest selection tracing the European manifestations of John Fahey's American Primitive style of playing. Given the period these tracks are culled from, there's obvious deference/reference being made to a master (and Basho, Jansch, Rose et al too, of course) who started out some 20 years before any of these songs were recorded. Still, Europe has its own traditions that can't be disregarded, and these tracks perhaps become most interesting when they start employing idioms more akin to their player's locale - flamenco, British folk folk, new age, ECM-styled jazz - and end up, at times, bearing uncanny resemblance to the playing of Vini Reilly, Maurice Deebank, Richard Pinhas and the like. That makes for an interesting intersection of trad song and modernist application, reframing to a degree how we might understand the 'primitive' form. The growing deployment of traditional music in contemporary composition and the experimental underground is perhaps revealing of an increasing malaise for (post)modern practice and a subsequent desire for purity/authenticity (you might wanna check the last issue of the Wire for further thoughts on this idea). In that context, European Primitive Guitar feels well timed, revealing some of the older ways of finding new values. Or, if you like, ew old paths to enlightenment - they're all mapped out there, if you know how to find them (NTS seems especially good at this). People have been at this same coalface for some time. Culture's a circle. And sometimes we must move backwards to progress.
