#19: Of Queues and Cures

Prog Rock in the Time of Disco and New Instrumental Acoustic Guitar Music

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Ambient Audiophile information network. Spring is in full swing here in the mid-Hudson Valley. Wildflowers are blooming and the jams are getting more and more jammy. Winter Prog & Jazz melts into Spring Fusion which bloom sin into Summer Jambands so lookout! This is how my listening has cycled the last few years. Of course, there are always side roads and tributaries and deviations. This week I got my partner into Prefab Sprout’s Steve McQueen. It turns out preparing Alaskan cod while children go apeshit pairs extremely well with Paddy McAloon’s yearning and wondering. Who knew??

But back to jambands, we’re seeing moe. & Phish for sure this summer. There’s an outside chance of catching Goose at SPAC. After having discovered them in 2019, I figure it’s high time I see them live.

What summer shows are you psyched for? Let us know in the comments…

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Thanks to patrons of this newsletter, the latest episode of The Trailhead is on Mixcloud. Have you made an account there and given us a follow? If not, please do that if you’re a regular listener. The simple act of “liking” an upload can really help raise the profile of the program. And it’s most appreciated. 

The show hit the ground running with a new floaty piece from UK-based ambient guitar project Black Brunswicker (Nettwerk) before drifting through some marine eyes (Past Inside the Present), Bathroom Plants (Aquablanca), Turn On the Sunlight (Moon Glyph), and Saapato (Sound As Language) before finishing with stunning new explorations of psychedelia courtesy of Kevin Coleman (Centripetal Force) and Swanox (Not Not Fun).

Set two was dedicated to the late, great Dickey Betts and featured pieces he wrote from the classic Eat a Peach and At Fillmore East albums as well as something off the unfairly maligned Win, Lose or Draw. We finished off with a beautiful reading of Betts’ ‘Jessica’ recorded at the legendary Nassau Coliseum in 1973—an era of the Allmans that more heads need to check out. Dickey’s playing in those days was otherworldly. 

Listen to the show here and peep the full tracklist below.

The Trailhead 131 Playlist:

1. Black Brunswicker - Sonic Potions - A Moment of Clarity (Nettwerk, 2024)

2. marine eyes - to belong - to belong (Past Inside the Present, 2024)

3. Bathroom Plants - Deep Compassion Stifles the Leviathan - NewMind Solidarity (Aquablanca, 2024)

4. Turn On The Sunlight - Miles and Miles of Ocean (with Laraaji) - Canoga to Haʻikū (Moon Glyph, 2024)

5. Saapato - Sanderlings Feeding At Sunset - On Fire Island (Sound As Language, 2024)

6. Kevin Coleman - Imaginary Conversations on Fish Hatchery Rd. - Imaginary Conversations (Centripetal Force, 2024)

7. Swanox - Old World - Rhodyrunner (Not Not Fun, 2024)

8. The Allman Brothers Band - High Falls - Win, Lose or Draw (Capricorn, 1975)

9. The Allman Brothers Band - Les Brers in A Minor - Eat A Peach (Capricorn, 1972)

10. The Allman Brothers Band - In Memory of Elizabeth Reed - At Fillmore East (Capricorn, 1971)

11. The Allman Brothers Band - Jessica - Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale, NY, 5/1/72 (The ABB Recording Co., 2005)

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When you were getting into classic rock, time and again you’d come across someone shitting on bands’ forays into disco. The Stones, the Dead, hell, even Tull dabbled in some of the dance rhythms and textures of the day. More often than not these experiments were met with horror, bewilderment and often extreme hate by the general record buying populace. I wasn’t there for the rock vs disco war but from where I stand it seems that probably only the crusty conservative future MAGAssholes on the rock side had a problem with the cross-pollinating.

Anyway, this is all to say you should not shy away from prog rockers’ late 70s works any longer. One day of record shopping a couple weeks ago yielded two amazing and very affordable finds from artists who many would argue had their best days far behind. But I’m here to tell you that you are really missing out if you don’t check out Steve Hillage’s Open (Virgin, 1979) and Camel’s Breathless (Decca/Gama, 1978).

The Hillage album is the more obviously dancefloor friendly of the two, getting really groovy and proto-housey. His guitar playing is dripping with cosmic searching through out and there’s a strong whiff off Funkadelic to a lot of the tracks. Mine is a first US pressing and it’s stellar. The versions on streaming and CD reissues put the track running order out of whack and insert some good but not OG cuts. But you don’t know what you don’t know so just go go go and flow.

My copy of the Camel LP is the first UK pressing on Decca/Gama and despite a slight edgewarp (handled with ease by my Rega P3) it sounds glorious. The band were really deep in the fusion zone by 1977 and the addition of Richard Sinclair (Caravan, Hatfield and the North) really makes this one a must have for Canterbury lovers. You also get Mel Collins from King Crimson and the positively infectious disco cut ‘Summer Lightning’. Just in time for soundtracking your first barbeque!

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The cover of Nicklas Sørensen’s Akustisk, a painting by Hans Einer Sørensen

No week would be complete without some solo instrumental guitar music and a couple really great new albums in the genre have dropped recently.

Danish guitarist Nicklas Sørensen has just self-released Akustisk, his first solo acoustic album. And it’s a real stunner! The Papir/Edena Gardens member has had a number of solo releases put out by the likes of El Paraiso and Aural Canyon, but all were plugged more or less shaped by electricity.

Akustisk sees the Copenhagen musician utilize air, space and time in an approach to instrumental guitar music that’s closer to Steve Hackett than Leo Kottke. It’s a truly wonderful little release that I can’t recommend highly enough.

It was a great surprise to get a box of media mail from Indiana’s Jacob Sunderlin recently. Along with a split LP with Spiral Joy Band, the package contained a couple tapes (sadly, I don’t have a deck set up right now—I’ve just been going through crappy ones and I’m kind of sick of fiddling with them) and a beautiful CD titled In The Bardo on Jacob’s own Flat Plastic Media label.

I excitedly popped the disc into the Shiit Urd and was instantly transported backwards to roughly 20 years ago when an old roommate lent me a CDR of John Fahey’s The Legend of Blind Joe Death (Takoma, 1996). Like that long ago day in a small Brooklyn apartment, I found myself deeply tuned in to Sunderlin’s patient phrasing and heavy thumb. Besides the generous helpings of fingerstyle guitar, In The Bardo contains perfectly deployed field recordings and a little amp feedback. It’s a real nice journey.