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CD
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SAAH 054CD
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"Glasgow, Scotland guitarist Ben Reynolds has been a prominent player in and contributor to the United Kingdom's fertile underground psych/drone scene for many years. A current member of the long-running and highly influential Ashtray Navigations, Reynolds appears on numerous recordings in the tight-knit UK drone cabal, including those by the venerable Vibracathedral Orchestra and Sunroof, and his duo project Motor Ghost with Directing Hand's Alex Neilsen. A cascade of solo excursions documenting a fractal of avant-thinking themes are available in limited DIY fashion, while proper pressings are available through Last Visible Dog, Digitalis Industries and Time-Lag. Although Reynolds has touched on acoustic elements in the past, it has mainly been as a textural layer to his psychedelic whirlpools, at which he is so adept. Reynolds puts his electric guitars aside in favor of exploring expressionist acoustic steel string terrain on his astonishing new solo recording Two Wings. Entirely improvised, Two Wings effortlessly weaves shimmering melodic lines together to form spontaneous compositions of dazzling depth and clarity. Incorporating a variety of pacing techniques with his fingerpicking style, Reynolds explores a linearity that harkens back to the American ragas of Robbie Basho, while exposing Middle Eastern influences much like the acoustic trickery of Sir Richard Bishop. The last tune on Two Wings is a written composition, utterly graceful yet striking in its similarities to the spontaneous compositions, underlying the lyrical quality in Reynold's music making. Two Wings is a remarkably unique, non-traditional take on the steel string tradition from a budding musical talent."
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CD
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LVD 108CD
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"Ben Reynolds is one of the newer voices from the same UK scene that includes Ashtray Navigations and many of the VHF celebrities (Sunroof!, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Richard Youngs, etc.) It should be of little surprise then that Book of Beyond fits very nicely among the recordings of those other artists -- noise/junk drone. As in his previous recordings, this at times dissolves into more acoustic offerings, but the Fahey influence appears to be mostly gone, and what remains in the quieter moments is far more bewildering. Time-stretched bells and weird short-wave transmissions, one helluva lot of well used ring-modulator (nice to hear it done well for a change), fumblings on more traditional instrumentation (flute, guitar, etc.) but never coming together to form anything you might call a song. Book of Beyond may truly be well titled, since this is music stretches out beyond his two other recent releases, taking what he's learned from his participation in Ashtray Navigations and focusing more on texture and aural disorientation. This is definitely the kind of uncomfortable music we are proud to release!"
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