The "guitar music" of today usually addresses one of two musical camps: an unbending classical repertoire or a rock-star school of performance theatrics.
On two new releases, the California Guitar Trio and Marc Ribot continue to pursue their respectively progressive voices for guitar outside those arenas. The CGT's Andromeda discovers a compositional voice all its own, and New Yorker Ribot is more (metaphorically and literally) cinematic on Silent Movies.
Andromeda is an unassuming triumph for CGT instrumentalists Paul Richards, Bert Lams and Hideyo Moriya. It is the first album in the group's 20-year history to focus exclusively on original works. Sure, fans who have caught the CGT in concert over the years might have been charmed by the stylistic reach of its cover material (classic rock, ethnic folk, prog-psychedelia and more). To a degree, such inspirations nurture these compositions. Hazardous Z has a deep rhythmic pull that mixes flamenco and prog-ish fancy, while Middle of TX operates with neo-Western flourishes that morph into a rockish twang and, eventually, a melodic affirmation that would do U2 proud.
But there is also a strong emotive resonance to this music that puts the trio in the guitar pantheon of such esteemed veterans as Anthony Phillips and Steve Hackett. You hear it in the chiming refrain from the extraordinary Cathedral Peak, done up in a band-style arrangement, and the beautifully wistful Portland Rain, which yields to suitably rockish orchestration.
The recording was cut in a Louisville studio above a funeral home and sound likes a dream. Thus Andromeda is indeed otherworldly at times. But its design still revolves around three ever-crafty acoustic guitar journeymen.
Ribot is often viewed as an avant-garde soldier. But he's really more of a chameleon who has authoritatively dabbled in free jazz, jagged funk and punk, Cuban tunes and country music (he was chief guitarist on the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss album Raising Sand).
On Silent Movies, his guitar work unfolds in quieter but not always settled solo guitar serenades that were composed for films, suggested by them or imagined for movie projects Ribot turned down.
That doesn't always translate into pretty picture music. Empty is pretty much that: a sketch of sparse, stoic notes that form fascinatingly brittle melodies. Bateau suggests a more wiry wilderness, like the one Ry Cooder did so expertly during the '80s. But its light folkish strain isn't as rural — or as geographically definable at all, for that matter.
Silent Movies' most vivid images emerge during Delancey Waltz. Its elegant melody is lovely but slightly harrowing — a postcard from a rhythmic resort where Ribot's often furious muses retire when they want some quiet time.
