Spiderwebs, In Between the Known and the Unknown, with Sandy Ewen

OK space cadets--here is a vigorous wash of cosmic guitars, the three-member Spiderwebs group and their outward bound album In Between the Known and the Unknown (Chiastic Society >x< 04).

What is it? A three-way avant venture by guitarists Sandy Ewen, Tom Carter and Ryan Edwards. This is a tapestry of feedback, avant skronk guitar soundings and reverberant envelopes of layered ambiance.

Four substantially involved segments appear before us, the first a collaboration of Tom and Ryan, the second Sandy and Ryan, the third Sandy and Tom and the long finale all three in tandem.

It is music that is the logical emergence and evolution of guitar atmospheric trends first set by Hendrix and Sharrock and brought to where we are now via Bailey, Frith, Fripp and etc.

This one succeeds by virtue of a cavernous attention to sonic sculpting, an ensemble-oriented devotion to detailed resonant psychedelics, and the rightness of the individual creative choices made by each member of the threesome.

It has noise elements, drones and overlaying metallic explosiveness, a sensitive openness to the avant possibilities of the electric guitar on the modern fringes of expansion.

I find it beautiful, provocative, musically rich, and cosmically far beyond. Kudos!

Eleven Twenty-Nine: Cosmic Two-Guitar Duets By Tom Carter and Mark Orleans

I won't say I am getting blase about music. That will never happen. But when you get stacks of CDs every week for review consideration, and many of them sound a little bit similar, you can find that at first listen nothing sticks in your head. They sometimes all run together until you listen for the second or third time. That was not the case with Eleven Twenty-Nine (Northern-Spy), a series of guitar duets by Tom Carter and Marc Orleans. From the moment it sounded from my speakers, I knew that this was a rather rare commodity.

The music is largely electric. There are quasi-trancey raga-rock sequences, there are bluesy excursions, there are expositions that have a minimalist post-Fripp-Eno ambiance. And all of it has the distinctive stamp of the guitarists' vision on it.

Both artists have a track record behind them. But all that doesn't have direct relevance to the plain fact: this is creative music, it takes you someplace without leaving you stranded there, and it glows with a kind of caring love of the sound of guitars and what's been done or undone with them since Hendrix, Duane Eddy, Gary Lucas, John Fahey and Robert Fripp plugged in (or didn't) and shaped a sound. Tom Carter and Marc Orleans are shaping their own sound. You can be there by plugging in your music system and putting this on.