Loren Connors - Red Mars - Family Vineyard - FV69

Now in his sixties, Loren Connors has essayed, quietly and determinedly, an increasingly abstract solo electric guitar sound since the seventies, his prolific output of over sixty albums slowed by parkinson's disease in the 90s.
Though Connors' recordings reside in the Blues Archive of the University of Mississippi, purists might be pressed to recognise the from in Red Mars, five superficially shapeless improvisations, characterised by light years of vast silences between lonely plucked notes, cosmic clouds of rushing hiss, and tiny shards of indeterminate sounds, receding into the black wastes.
Connors apprehends the void. It's kind of beautiful, and kind of terrifying.

(6/11/11)