American Primitive Guitar is going through a major renaissance right now, not seen since John Fahey and his famed Takoma label. One of the brightest stars in the heady AmPrim resurgence is the North Carolina by way of Virginia guitarist, Daniel Bachman. Since 2011, Bachman has been quietly putting out stunning LP’s full of modern takes on traditional fingerpicking techniques and structures you’d have to hear to believe.
This writer would be hard bent to choose a specific piece on River to focus on. It’s a record that works a s a whole; Bachman out there by his lonesome, choosing to walk past the myths of the past to create his own myth, on his own terms, within his own plane. Instead of playing homage to instrumental guitar heroes or recreating traditional note-for-note readings by folk luminaries, Bachman finds his own way to the river.
Bachman’s newest, River, is where all the labor he’s put into his work thus far, pays off and focalizes onto one singular piece of wax. The mixture of hard and soft, tradition and practice, pacing and urgency throughout River is fucking mystical.
