John Coxon - Real Magic Vol.1

Hegoa Diskak’s Mikel Acosta assists in compiling this first-time-in-a-while solo album of home recordings from TREADER head honcho, John Coxon. Apropos of Coxon’s scientific background, Real Magic is an unusual proposition, though it’s a phrase that’s well suited to the conjured-out-of-the-air quality of these eleven pieces. Their prosaic numbered titles read like diary entries, documenting Coxon's daily creative process, built around early morning recording sessions in 2021 within a confined environment with a limited arrangement of instrumentation (guitar, percussion, CDJ & turntable) while competing with chronic tinnitus. Mostly minimalist and derived from avant blues primitivism, Coxon indulges an exploratory venture through the competing worlds of Cage and Jandek, the results caught somewhere in the hinterland of composition and improvisation, reminding me a fair bit of Tony Sinden's Functional Action Parts 2 & 3 (a very good thing). There's a 'first thought best thought' dictat seemingly in operation here, nothing fussed over or over-elaborated, an apparent concession to the power of automatic writing - it just came out this way, after decades of work! Or more romantically, what Coxon himself concludes as, "an endlessly fascinating and magical thing that I still don’t understand". Magic is perhaps little more than a trick of the light. Coxon is adept as any in letting it shine its certain way.