Michael Chapman – Trainsong: Guitar Compositions 1967 – 2010 – Tompkins Square – TSQ2530 - ****

Sourcing fresh meat, a cabal of powerful Pygmalions, including Tompkins Square records and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, declare Michael Chapman not an overlooked English Seventies singer-songwriter, but an innovator in the vein of John Fahey and the American primitive school of tranced-out folk blues instrumentals.
Now he's the subject of a tribute record, Happy Birthday, staffed by famous fans and friends, and has a vinyl noise album due on Moore's label. Most significantly, the double CD Trainsong sees the seventy year old survivor re-record twenty-six principally acoustic, finger-picked numbers from his catalogue, stretching initially simple structures into unknown space, transforming them into intense, modal meditations.

(1/5/11)