#steffen basho-junghans

[dustedmagazine]

Various Artists — Solstice: A Tribute to Steffen Basho-Junghans (Obsolete Recordings)

Steffen Basho-Junghans

Solstice: A Tribute to Steffen Basho-Junghans by Various Artists

Steffen Basho-Junghans was a master of the steel string guitar, born in East Germany but finding a spiritual home in the geographically indeterminant blend of folk, blues and raga of the Takoma School.  Like Robbie Basho, whose name he appended to his, Basho-Junghans could play in a spare, contemplative style or conjure eddies and cascades of orchestra complexity. His work was always crystal clear and precise, but it evoked something beyond the notes themselves, a mystery and transcendence.

Basho-Junghans died last December, and so Buck Curran, who is also a devotee and practitioner of the Takoma style, brought together an international group of guitarists to pay tribute. His Solstice follows the same format as homages to Jack Rose (Ten Years Gone: A Tribute to Jack Rose) and Robbie Basho (We are All One, In the Sun: A tribute to Robbie Basho and Basket Full of Dragons: A Tribute to Robbie Basho Vol II). These are not covers, but rather free-flowing meditations on Junghans-Basho’s art and influence, with different artists emphasizing different elements of his work.

Curran himself opens and closes the disc with two mournful, contemplative versions of “Winter Solstice.” He plays both cuts on a 12-string guitar that once belonged to Robbie Basho, and that, indeed, featured on all of his records from 1965 to 1986. The guitar, however, needs some serious repair. Curran’s slow, considering approach, where each bent note gets the space to hang and decay, may be partly down to the instrument. In an email, he confided, “[It’s] only possible to play the first few frets, open notes/open harmonics and play slide with it (as I did on my recordings).” The two cuts are, nonetheless, very beautiful, both excellent examples of the rewards of working within limitations.

Many of the other artists on this 22-track collection will be familiar to fans of this Fahey-influenced style of playing. Joseph Allred lets the mountain air (and a few birdcalls) into his exploration of Basho-Junghans’ raga blues in “An Upper Cumberland Raga,” while Isasa, from Spain, lets the space between notes speak in the lovely “Paseo por el Alto Tajo.” In “Every Blue,” Nick Jonah Davis finds tranquility in limpid slides, while Boston’s Robert Noyes rambles and jangles against a bowed note drone in “Surmises.”

The most revealing tracks, though, are the ones that depart furthest from what you expect. Henry Kaiser’s “Requiem for Steffen Basho-Junghans” jars a full set of strings into discord. It sounds like a piano after it’s dropped a couple of feet, ringing with disgruntled dissonance. E. Jason Gibbs plays guitar like a percussion instrument, letting abrupt squeaks and squawks mark out unsettling intervals of time. And Bhajan Bhoy’s “I Can See the Lights of Heaven” interpolates 78-record crackle, bell-like guitar cadences and actual bells, into a chiming, luminous soundscape that opens to the numinous just as Basho-Junghans’ work often did.

Altogether, it’s a lovely tribute, but also absolutely its own thing. It may help to know Basho-Junghans’ music, or to be familiar with the participating artists, but it’s not necessary. So, use Solstice to honor Basho-Junghans if you already admire him. Or put it on to explore how forward-thinking guitar players are extending his vision around the world. It’s also a way to help out since some of the proceeds from Solstice will go to Basho-Junghans family. All good reasons to check in. What are you waiting for?

Jennifer Kelly

[radiophd]

steffen basho-junghans -- last days of the dragons

[dyingforbadmusic]

Steffen Basho-Junghans -- Farewell to a Friend by Glenn Jones

Steffen and I were pen-pals long before the internet -- sharing cassettes of our earliest recordings via mail. He stayed with me in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the mid-'90s, on his only visit to the US. He was recovering from a carpal tunnel operation on his wrist, which meant he couldn't play guitar for nearly a year.

While he was here, my wife Nora took him to the Music Emporium, one of great musical instrument stores in New England. It was on her birthday, October 31st, and every year for several years thereafter Steffen would send her a drawing on that day to commemorate their afternoon together.

Neither of us had issued any actual albums of our guitar music at that point, but once Steffen could play again he began recording in earnest, first for his own Blue Moment Arts label, then for other labels as well. (I helped get him his first US record deals; *Rivers and Bridges* for Strange Attractors Audio House, and *Song of the Earth* for Sublingual -- I penned the liner notes for the latter album.)

For the shows Steffen and I did together (all of them in Belgium) we often ended up sleeping in the same digs. Steffen, invariably, would wake up and greet the day with such grand "pronunciomentos" as:

“I want to write a composition about Belgium. It will be called "Rain and [dramatic pause] Chocolate.'”

“I have an idea for a piece of music, called 'Twenty-seven Apples in the Morning.' What is it, 'Twenty-seven Apples in the Morning'? Well. I am the first apple and I record something, then send it to you. You are the second apple; you record something and send it to the third apple, and so on. The 27th apple sends it back to me. Then I issue it and get all the money because it was my idea! Ha ha!”

Jack Rose and I tried to get Steffen to the US a couple times, but he was inflexible about what he expected to be paid, explaining to us that the artist is as important a contributor to society as doctors or anyone else and they deserve to be well-compensated for their work. (Steffen's world-view was -- sometimes frustratingly -- untempered by reality.)

Jack and I were willing to tour for only our expenses just so we could bring Steffen over, but even paying ourselves nothing, we still couldn't guarantee him $350.00, a place to stay, and a meal, in, say, Brattleboro, Vermont, on a Tuesday night. (I'm not sure we could have pulled it off in NYC on a Saturday for that matter.)

So it never happened. People in the States never knew what they missed.

I'll be thinking often about Steffen in the days ahead. He was a very, very special character and a magician with the guitar.

[wackjumper]

When music became a trickle : small foveal fields playlist round-up 02

To find a moment of peace in the face of acoustic ugliness of everyday life Nicola's picks

Steffen Basho-Junghans "In the Morning Twilinght"

Daniel Bachman "Coronach"

Ghazal "Fire"

Zelienople "Don't Be Lonely"

Norman Westberg "Sliding Sledding"

Loren Mazzacane, Jim O'Rouke "Now Who Are These Guys?"

Mary Lattimore "Altar of Tammy"

yes/and "Centered Shell"

[fileunder]

Steffen Basho-Junghans - Charlette

[ozkar-krapo]

V/A [Tetuzi AKIYAMA / Steffen BASHO-JUNGHANS / Sir Richard BISHOP / Jack ROSE]

"Wooden Guitar"

(2LP. Locust Music. 2008 / rec. 2003?) [US/DE/JP]

[obsoleterecordings]

Today is the re-release via Obsolete Recordings of 'We are All One, In the Sun': a tribute to Robbie Basho feat. Glenn Jones, Meg Baird, Arborea, Steffen Basho-Junghans, Helen Espvall, Cian Nugent, Fern Knight, Rahim Alhaj. The album was produced by Buck Curran and first released by Important Records in 2010. UK imprint altvinyl also released a limited vinyl run. The album made Acoustic Guitar magazine Best albums of 2010, Pitchfork 7.8, Mojo Magazine 4 Stars. Also worth checking out is the in-depth article about Basho 'Voice of the Eagle' that Buck wrote for The Fretboard Journal The article was published in 2012 in issue 24. Avail for streaming @ Spotifyhttps://open.spotify.com/album/1wU5lHkuHpndhOR44x6rH4 @ iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/we-are-all-one-in-sun-tribute/id1041236800

[thursdays-at-the-coffeeshop]

soft + nostalgic.

[dustedmagazine]

Henry Kaiser — Mahalo Nui (Metalanguage)

John Fahey was 27 years old when he recorded Requia. While parts of it play as a sincere ceremony of remembrance for people who meant something to him, it was nonetheless the work of an ornery young man. That provenance showed, especially on the spectacularly trollish, side-long musique concrete composition, “Requiem For Molly.” Henry Kaiser knows all about Fahey, guitars experimental music, and Requia in particular. He’s recorded a couple albums of his own using that title, and posed for one of them in a visual homage to Fahey’s record. But Kaiser’s also managed to live a longer life than Fahey, very different but no less astounding. He has been able to carry on a career as a boundary-straddling guitarist who gets to play whatever he wants with pretty much whoever he wants and also to work as a research diver with a specialty in under-ice video work.

Several tracks from this projectstarted out as a COVID-era project, when Kaiser included among the regular YouTube videos that he posted from lockdown with shout-outs to recently passed musicians, such as Steffen Basho-Junghans and David Lindley. Over time, the partings tend to proliferate. Kaiser found himself with ten mostly-solo tracks that shared two criteria: they memorialized fellow travelers who adventured with him upon or under the ice, or who made music, films or musical instruments; and they continued Kaiser’s decades-long determination to do more with the guitar than it previously had been able to do. These became Mahalo Nui.

Born in 1951, Kaiser has now lived long enough to know loss in ways that Fahey could not when he recorded Requia in 1967. Across its two sides, Fahey dug deep into sorrow and respect, and also let fly some ill-focused antagonism. You’ll some sorrow on Mahalo Nui, particularly on the sole non-solo performance, a slide guitar trio in honor of David Lindley. But you’ll hear a lot more joy and gratitude; the album’s title translates from Hawaiian as Thank You Very Much. “Hard Time Killin’ Spoonful Requiem For Paul Hostetter” mashes up Derek Bailey and Skip James gestures with more glee than rue; perhaps Kaiser assembled the performances from licks that the late luthier loved? The glistening tones and complex timbres of “Antarctic Requiem For Liz Sutter & Bija Sass,” which is named after two of his fellow Antarctic travelers, evoke a state of drifting wonder and weightless solace.

In 1990, I caught a Kaiser solo concert and came away as impressed with the looming height of his effects rack as I was with his music. He’s never been afraid to indulge the possibilities of technology and technique, and there have certainly been times when they have gotten the better of him. That never happens on Mahalo Nui. The occasions when he foregrounds technical interventions, such as the school of psychedelic blurs on “Mysterious Requiem For Paul Plimley” and the real-time combination of scything slide guitar and MIDI-controlled piano notes on “Some Of The Great Ancestors Inside My Guitar,” pay off real musical dividends. This record makes a strong case for both the technical and emotional aspects of Kaiser’s art. One caveat for those who prefer physical formats; if you go to Kaiser’s Bandcamp page, this title is only offered as a download. However, it is also available as a CD if you’re willing to search a bit.

Bill Meyer

[radiophd]

steffen basho-junghans -- northern winds

[dyingforbadmusic]

Some love for Steffen Basho-Junghans

[kevindurkiin]

Transfigurations 2021 :: Recent + Recommended 21st Century Guitar

A survey of genre-expanding guitar soli from Yasmin Williams, Rob Noyes, Mason Lindahl, Adeline Hotel, Steffen Basho-Junghans, and more, each expanding what you can do with six (or 12) strings.

The post Transfigurations 2021 :: Recent + Recommended 21st Century Guitar appeared first on Aquarium Drunkard.

Transfigurations 2021 :: Recent + Recommended 21st Century Guitar published first on https://soundwizreview.tumblr.com/

[ozkar-krapo]

V/A [Tetuzi AKIYAMA / Steffen BASHO-JUNGHANS / Sir Richard BISHOP / Jack ROSE] “Wooden Guitar” (2LP. Locust Music. 2008 / rec. 2003?) [US/DE/JP]