'The Peeper and Chin-Chin', a home-recorded 10-track bedroom experiment, is the third release this year from Derby’s most introspective musician, namely the low-key, lo-fi singer-songwriter and guitarist Chris Jones, a.k.a. LONESOME JONESOME.
Locked indoors with only an acoustic guitar, tambourine and FM3 Bhudda machine for company, the results form a misty patchwork of incidental pieces that each clock in at around the 1-2minute mark.
Poignant despite, or perhaps because of their DIY structure, this series of instrumentals are often melancholy, yet always soothing to the soul. The studied intricacy of his guitar work is incredibly absorbing: nylon strings awash with harmonics are alive with sad and fragile beauty. Especially when the sound of his fingers sliding along the fretboard glides above the layered trance.
Classical guitar sounds dominate the record, but country, and world folk influences have also been poured into this intriguing and gentle collection. As genres and guitar strings bend, the sketchy interludes evolve along with knocks on the door and the looping, slowed-down sounds of rainy-day passing traffic that survive. ‘One Hundred’ is a celebration of this, and the laughter of children is significantly the clearest of the human voices heard (no finer sound, ladies and gen’lmen, no finer sound!).
There are no instant pop fixes here: these introspective preludes are the results of an altogether different approach. Levels of intrigue rise accordingly as it drifts and slowly, but surely, comes the awareness that listening to this record is a genuinely positive experience. It’s there in the gentle shifts in tempo during ‘See You By The Sea’ (this opening track has recently featured on Radio 1, given airplay by Rob Da Bank), as well as in the mind-altering harmonic beauty of ‘Gimme Freak Weather’ and final track ‘The Mover’. This harmonic loveliness also shines torch-like out of the eerie darkness of ‘Oven Shots’.
|
‘Lady With A Dog’s Head’ has an eyes-shut, drop-dead gorgeous melody that’s completely at odds with its grotesque title, and the rattle of the tambourine gently shakes as the jaw-dropping ‘Concrete Fields’ unfolds, and fades after a brief and beautiful half-life.
You can pick this up for next to nowt, and you are strongly advised by this writer to do so. The shift that'll be generated in your attention span will slow the world right down and for 18 minutes your mind will be lost in a therapeutic state of reflective bliss.
|
