sandy bull

sandy bull - still valentine's day 1969 (water reissue, 2006)

los adjetivos que mejor le cuadran a este disco son inaudito, insólito, flotante, espacial..ingrávido, planeador. Sandy Bull es otro portento de las seis cuerdas cuyo Fantasias for guitar and Banjo es una de las cosas más bonitas y recomendables que he escuchado nunca. en su música hay rastros de blues, raga, jazz, folk, música india, medieval...sonidos que van más allá de las fronteras. como ese tex mex hawaiano y cósmico que es Memphis, Tn, o los diez minutos de suaves punteos y recuerdo a Luiz Bonfa que es Manha de Carnival. o las dos canciones interpretadas e improvisadas con 'úd', instrumento árabe precursor del laúd europeo que Sandy Bull descubrió tras un encuentro con el músico egipcio Hamza El Din. un disco que podría estar en la misma órbita que el maravilloso Swimming on It de Greg Malcolm. un directo casi irreal con colaboradores de ensueño como el batería de Ornette Coleman, Billy Higgins. y Tip of the Tongue en Volcanic tongue.

"Sandy Bull was a label mate of John Fahey's during his time at Vanguard and his contribution to contemporary guitar modes was as crucial as Fahey's, even while Fahey remained inexplicably dismissive, not to say borderline hostile, at the very mention of his name. Early on, Bull flashed on a syncretic combination of American blues form, free jazz based improvisation, Indian raga forms and applied electricity. The result was an Ur-drone music that amplified the static black space at the heart of the deepest blues while making unlikely connections to the phantom architectures of Bach and early music composers like William Byrd albeit transmuting it via higher-minded techniques drawn from Indian devotional music and amplified rock ritual. Still Valentine's Day is the first ever live album from Bull, documenting two massively potent solo shows from San Francisco's Matrix in 1969, one of them on the same bill as Fahey, with Fahey's portion of the show already documented on Water's previous Great Santa Barbara Oil Slick CD. The first set sees Bull on electric guitar, the second on Oud and both sets are thick with the same kind of heady magic and effortlessly psychedelic minimalism that Dylan so convincingly conjured from the air in his 1966 acoustic performances. Indeed, the opening version of Bach's "Bouree" is one of the most supremely LSD-damaged elegies to ever come from his hands, with whole webs of lucid baroque majesty strung like slow-spinning stars held in form-blurring gravities. And the way he skirts the melody on Chuck Berry's "Memphis TN" is uniquely inventive. He remains one of the most significant secret influences on modern underground thought. The whole deal comes beautifully packaged in a card slipcase with a booklet that includes snaps and extensive liners by Byron Coley.."

"Wow! Rare live document from one of the most enigmatic and legendary figures in the solo guitar scene. Recorded over two shows in 1969 at San Francisco's Matrix on the same bill as John Fahey (The Great Santa Barbara Oil Slick documents Fahey's performance on this night) and accompanied by free jazz percussionist, Billy Higgins. Using tape machines, oud, slide guitar and a new electric guitar and amp (apparently some of his equipment was stolen, so you can hear him fiddling with the new equipment, tweaking the settings), the pieces here are taken mostly from his 1968 album E Pluribus Unum, an electric departure from his earlier acoustic classical excursions, that was much derided by purists, but stands as one of Bull's most amazing recordings. Soaked in tremelo and reverb, the raga-ish blues he evokes here display a raw evocative power not captured on any of his studio recordings. The amazing pieces Bull performs on oud, an instrument he picked up after meeting Hamza el Din (whose Escalay: The Water Wheel is an AQ fave) show off Bull's singular gift for combining jazz, blues, middle eastern idioms and classical fantasias into new and unchartered territories."

electric blend 1

improvisation for oud 2

memphis, tn

"I was always trying to do something a little different, change, try different approaches." Sandy Bull