Cian Nugent - Doubles – VHF – vhf125 - ***

Like Glen Jones, the young Dubliner Cian Nugent operates in the shadow of the American avant-folk maestro John Fahey, here on two lengthy acoustic guitar instrumentals.

The drone-tuned, one note, assault of the opening five minutes of Peaks & Troughs, and its subsequent quarter of an hour flirtation with development, echo Fahey at his most uncompromising. Sixes & Sevens adds drums, horns and viola to the template, building to the kind of crescendo Fahey's inheritor, the Chicago polymath Jim O'Rourke, engineered on his orchestrated mid-nineties epics Bad Timing and Insignificance. Nugent's assimilated his influences.
Can he surpass them?

(4/9/11)