turner williams jr.

turner williams jr. - ensoleillée (les disques omnison, 2023)

aunque solo fuera por la portada☀️...pero: 'galaxie á 8h'.

el resto es, casi, igual de bonito. alabama soul, avant/appalachian-folk de la pradera con cítara india. vinilo artesanal limitado a 100 copias, con el sol pintado de diferente color. pero ya no quedan...

"Alabama-born musician Turner Williams Jr. (now based in Marseille) manages to pay respects to the rich tradition of American folk music whilst adding his own unique spin, indebted to years spent travelling and living overseas.  His instrument of choice, the Shahi baaja, is an electrified Indian zither that is rich in overtones and timbre.  Each of the six pieces here eschew any typical song structure in favour of cylindrical forms, relying on heavy use of repetition and time-based effects to create a sound that is rich both in improvisation and atmospherics.  It’s an odd cultural hotchpotch that’s difficult to place, feint echoes of Celtic hammered Dulcimer (Dorothy Carter) or Michael O’Shea’s geographical dislocated Mo Chara pieces via the traditional Appalachian folk of Basho / John Fahey, Pierre Jean Croset’s shimmering harmonic lyre recordings or the most recent hit from Megabasse.  Limited to 100, very handmade." all night flight records

"Where does Turner Williams Jr. fit ? Let's put it this way: in a lineage where the history of strings, via folk but not only, goes back to Roscoe Holcomb and John Jacob Niles (it doesn't matter if they don't play exactly the same instruments, or if they built them themselves or not), before it was extended by John Fahey, Robbie Basho, Peter Walker, or enriched by Sandy Bull's own effects, with whom the Appalachians, India or the spirit of certain Celtic-influenced ballads cohabit seamlessly with repetitive, and why not noisy, structures. Of the latter, Turner Williams Jr. continues the syncretism from Marseille, where he has lived since leaving the United States and his native Alabama. In fact, his instrument of choice, the shahi baaja, is of Indian origin, which explains why some of his many limited-edition recordings evoke a fantastical Orient. What's more, although the shahi baaja is played from a sort of retro-futuristic typewriter keyboard, its strings are akin to the dulcimer and the Vosges spruce, providing a link between his homeland, Japan, France and Pakistan - among others. The drone and sympathetic strings, reminiscent of the bulbul tarang once electrified, are reminiscent of Michael Flower, Hans Reichel's daxophone or - above all - the self-produced cassettes of the duo Davey Williams and LaDonna Smith."

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