German guitarist Steffen Basho-Junghans (already in a band named Wacholder
in 1978) debuted as the main European heir to the school of the
"American primitive guitar"
(John Fahey,
Robbie Basho).
His albums for solo
acoustic guitar, such as the naive and pastoral
In Search of the Eagle's Voice (Blue Moment Arts, 1995), with
the Purple Mountain Raga,
and the
two volumes of raga-influenced Fleur de Lis (Blue Moment Arts, 1996),
with
Omar Khayyam Garden (first volume) and
Variations On Van Gogh,
The Golden Sumsaidad
and New Shakespeare Variations (in the second volume),
indulged in hypnotic sound painting of a less metaphysical nature than Fahey's
and of a less spiritual nature than Basho's but with a more articulate flair for
the flow of notes.
At the time, he was experimenting with a newly-stringed but still untuned 12-string guitar, as documented in the
3.5-hour Virgin Orchestra No 1 (October 1998), of which only a fragment was released (on a 2002 compilation).
Landscapes in Exile (Blue Moment Arts, 2001), recorded in November 1998,
continued that experiment with
Wild Geese Alightning On The Sandy Shore,
100 Birds Courting The Phoenix and the 24-minute
Landscapes In Exile.
Song of the Earth (Sublingual, 2000), his first masterpiece,
was, instead, a gentle and intense philosophical meditation a` la John Fahey.
The nine-minute Song Of The Earth is emblematic of his gentle colloquial guitar chatter.
The ten-minute The Grand Entry is instead a more convoluted piece that
evokes intense soul-searching.
The more experimental Inside (Strange Attractors, 2001) is a suite in
three movements. The first one is
bluesy, hiccupping and quasi-mechanical (it is actually
divided in two movements, the second part starting
after nine minutes). The second 23-minute movement (which is spread over three tracks)
begins with an agonizing pattern, then turns into a shaggy and prayer-like
performance with almost dissonant moments and finally concludes in a messy
tantrum.
The third 20-minute movement opens indulges in aggressive riffing that repeats in
algorithmic fashion.
The drawback of the album is that it feels a bit too brainy,
a distant relative of serialism.
And so the compositions of Waters in Azure (Strange Attractors, 2002) were austere studies in texture and ambience.
Waters Pt 1 abandons the clock-like strumming for a hysterical fit of
screeching and hissing, and
Waters Pt 2 pulls the strings apart to produce wildly dissonant noise.
The eight-minute Inside the Rain revisits the algorithmic approach of Inside but with the energetic colloquial tone of Song Of The Earth.
The hypnotic strumming of One No 1 Pt 1 concedes only microscopic echoes and variations. One No 1 Pt 3 is more tense but also less organic.
The album closes with Azure No 1 The Suntreader,
eleven minutes of hammering minimalist repetition
(ironically, almost sounding like a remix of the opening of Who's We won't get Fooled again).
What is missing from these experiments is a smile.
Waters Pt 3 is the only piece that shows some emotion.
These mathematic guitar instrumentals are almost the exact opposite of Fahey's and Basho's.
Rivers and Bridges (Strange Attractors, 2003) abandoned the experimental
edges of the previous works.
It contains expansive watercolors such as Autumn II and Hear The Winds Coming, and even a breezy and melodic piece Rainbow Dancing.
But mainly it includes two tours de force, displays of both virtuoso fingerpicking and fecund invention.
The 22-minute The River Suite is a lively melodic fantasy that condenses
lyrical, scenic and narrative elements. After
seven minutes it seems to intone a vibrant ballad, and
then it picks up speed and "color" as if running through fields of flowers.
After eleven minutes it turns moody and brooding, but at the end it is still
a breathless run through an exuberant landscape, perhaps trying to evoke
rapids and waterfalls.
The 17-minute Fahey tribute The Takoma Bridge Incident is a colder,
more somber and more demanding composition that after twelve minutes engages
in some intricate
The double-disc 7Books (Strange Attractors, 2004) contains lengthy improvisations.
that seem to illustrate how individual discrete notes come to compose a fluid piece.
I (18:21) is the extreme textbook for this methodology, starting with extremely separated notes.
II (22:40) is an even colder and abstract exercise.
III (14:47) is a more dynamic piece, that rises to a trotting climax and then disintegrates again.
IV (12:21) is the most eloquent composition, despite the frequent incursion of dissonant glissandoes.
V (19:50) seems to build to a climax of reverbs in the first six minutes, but then it implodes in a disordered subsonic journey that only at the end achieves some kind of consistency.
It is all very interesting, but hardly musical.
Unknown Music I - Alien Letter (Sillyboy, 2005) imagines how an alien
would play the guitar.
It was followed by
Unknown Music II - Transwarp Meditation (2005) and
Unknown Music III - O Som Naha (2010).
The centerpiece of
Late Summer Morning (Strange Attractors, 2006) is the
22-minute Late Summer Morning, a tender meditation that weaves a thick
tinkling carpet while slowly increasing in speed and volume. It sounds not only
physically challenging but also a sort of self-inspiring piece, as if each
brief pattern of notes fueled its own evolution, propelling itself to ever
higher dimensions.
The eight-minute Woodland Orchestra, instead, harks back to Junghans'
early post-folk experiments: the metallic tones of the strings are bent to
envelop each other in a sort of dome-like effect. Again, one is reminded of
recursive structures, and, again, the result is an irregular but steady
crescendo. In addition, the staccato quality of the strumming evokes
ancient Japanese music.
The repetitive and aggressive Azure No 3
and the propulsive Northern Winds make the collection one of the most
varied and eclectic of his career.
All in all this sounds like a survey (if not a summa yet) of Junghans' techniques and visions.
Is (Architects of Harmonic Rooms, 2009) collects home recordings of 2000-06.
The 18-minute
When The Plains Are Singing
is a plaintive lament, almost a plantation song.
The ten-minute Changes is the opposite: a frenzied youthful raga.
Azure No 8 is another "Azure" experiment.
The Dancer On The Hill (Architects Of Harmonic Rooms, 2020) contains
one of his best Fahey-ian pieces, Raga Peru, and
Rainbow Dancer is a joyful rewrite of Rainbow Dancing.
Steffen Basho-Junghans died in December 2022 at the age of 69.
