Daniel Bachman
Axacan
There has never been an album quite like "Axacan", guitarist Daniel Bachman’s latest double LP. By defiantly playing against type and creating an album that, sonically and compositionally speaking, has more in common with Pierre Schaeffer or Edgard Varèse than John Fahey or even Jack Rose, Bachman has crafted one of the most introspective and deeply personal albums of instrumental music released in recent memory. "Axacan" weaves together acoustic guitar and harmonium alongside raw material from …
River
"At their best and worst, solo acoustic guitar albums can feel like workshops, demonstrations meant to spotlight a player’s depth or breadth of knowledge and technique. A genteel folk shuffle cedes to a gnarly blues moan, or a ragtime ditty yields to an extended raga improvisation. Maybe there’s a banjo number, a fiddle tune, or a collage of field-recording abstraction, where crickets chirp or creeks trickle beneath incidental chords. This condition has seemed especially true for the large group…
Miscellaneous Ephemera and Other Bullshit
"First off, the cover. Let's make it clear -- this was totally Daniel's idea and is based on the original art for Tony Rice's California Album (Rebel SLP-1549, 1975). Why? We cannot say exactly. The album is considered to be in Rice's all-time top five. But so what? Who amongst us can claim to have fully plumbed the depths of Bachman's mind? The guy is a genius and those types just have 'their ways.' So shut up about the cover already. This album itself was released under the title Daniel Ba…