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CD Feature/ Jim Mcauley: "Gongfarmer 18"

  Tobias

It is one of the strangest feats that the guitar has marked the music of the 20th Century more than any other instrument except for the Synthesizer, but has remained an odd duck when it comes to its solo ambitions. Full of suprising playing techniques and sounds, both romantic and raw, one should expect it to be Mr. Marketing’s safe bet. Rather it has merely attained the status of poetry in the printing business: Everybody loves it, but noone’s buying. “Gongfarmer 18” is yet another powerful statement in favour of the guitar and its sheer infinite possibilities.

Of course, it all boils down to the question of who’s plucking the strings. Jim Mcauley is one of those rare characters, who neither care about the label someone else puts on their music (which Mr. Marketing finds naive), nor about the profitability of his recordings (which Mr. Marketing finds highly dangerous). Pictures reveal him as someone who’s seen quite a bit in his lifetime, but it’s his music, which really opens up the window to his heart. “Gongfarmer 18” jumps from harmonic musings to wild tone bending, from menacingly pumping Rhythms to moments at the border of silence and takes the journey from frozen Siberia to the dusty and dry sounds of the desert. Only a few of the tracks are completely improvised, but all of them actually integrate improvisation as a means of composition. In the relentless heat, which slows down all thoughts and movements to a burning trance, the borders between genres and externally imposed categories disappear anyway. What separates the album from most others, however, is the fact that it does nor represent a dire quest for “newness”. In his enthusiasm and straightforward manner (displaxed also by his informative and likeable booklet notes), Mcauley seems like a child searching for excitment and each note sounds as fresh as the preceding one. Starting from the smallest of motives or a rhythmic figure, these pieces evolve step by step, their eyes open in amazement as they delve deeper and deeper into unknown territory. The nine minutes of “Eyelids of Buddha”, whose fairy-tale-like beginnings are put to the test in an unsettling middle part, are a perfect example and so is “Nika’s Waltz”, a brutally honest love song without words, which samples the pleasure of its sweetness until the listener looses all sense of time.

No overdubs were used and that may not be remarkable in itself, but it is hard to believe when confronted with the eclectice aural palette of “Gongfarmer 18”. Mcauley lets the music boil and bubble, swoon and sway and one many occasions, you could swear that he uses an effect pedal  - but he doesn’t. It is the tender little melodies and recognisable chord patterns that he comes up with again and again which keep this from being a mere instrumental show piece. Whatever Mr. Marketing may think of it – the solo guitar is a shining star on this record.

By Tobias Fischer

Homepage: Nine Winds Records