A natural oratory style. An electroacoustic guitar coda. C minor augmented, meet e flattened 5th. At least that’s how initial reaction alludes. On Danish artist Paw Grabowski’s second record for the KrysaliSound label – an unofficial paean to the world of electronicised drone guitar music – lies simplicity in wonderfully interwoven layers of melody, even pulses, mixolydian modes and nodules of noodly Earth-defying anti-war gravity.
Over the course of a grassy 30 minute patchwork of drone moss and figures in the vein of Sawako and Loren Connors, the central chords begin to overlap, break down and blend their tracks, as if part of a massive tape machine. It’s an addictive listen, smooth to the touch and evoking memories of log fires, candlelit suppers or rather in Western worlds munchies at midnight with the heating turned up.
While nothing here reinvents, the wheels are intriguingly oiled with guitar minimalism in mind. Significant effort has been made to dampen play the sonic field rather than overcompress it. This gives the music a tendency to become more than just ambience, because it’s unignorable. Then again, honeyed guitar meanderings were always welcome here…