Liguria, in Italy, is where the boot might meet the top of the thigh, a mountainous region in which rocky cliffs jut out of the sea and tourists hike from fishing village to fishing village along the Cinque Terre. It’s not exactly unpopulated — the largest city is Genoa — but there are lots of parks and natural areas, and it is there in these wilder places that guitarist Davide Cedolin finds inspiration.
This cassette release collects seven serene and unruffled meditations, mostly in finger picked acoustic guitar, but augmented sometimes with threads of bowed bass, lap steel and harmonica. Natural sounds, like a thunderstorm and bird noises, move in and out of these pieces, which are, themselves, natural and unpretentious. You can imagine the guitarist working them out in some sunny spot, perhaps picking up stakes and running inside when the weather turns and its starts to rain.
“Ca de Cavo” is especially lovely, its eddying cascades of finger picking shot through with bending, shifting tones of lap steel (that’s Mike Horn from Seawind of Battery sitting in). These compositions are not overly concerned with melody or song structure. They unspool in repeated patterns with few signposts indicating beginning, middle or end. They open out into a kind of wide-horizoned dreaminess, an infinity pool of sound that stretches as far as you can see.
Cedolin’s Instagram tells us that he’s been learning from Daniel Bachman, another skilled finger-picker whose compositions stretch to incorporate the living world. He is, at least so far, more tethered to the sound of his instrument; field recordings nest in the crevices of his songs, rather than taking them over. In “Lische Alte,” for instance, the rumble of wind slips between pensive guitar chords, the arc of lap steel (Horn again) tracing a throughline in the lyric jangle.
Ligurian Pastoral exists in its own time and space. It’s in no hurry to get to the end of its placid compositions, nor, after a while, is the listener. But it does take some adjustment, some slowing, some calming, some willingness to sit with this music, to get to its pleasures. Put it on with the sun streaming in and the whole afternoon idling in front of you. It will unfold like a flower.
Davide Cedolin — Ligurian Pastoral Vol. II (Torto Editions/Island House)
Photo by Mattia Meirana
Davide Cedolin’s latest release constructs a sonic landscape out of fingerpicked acoustic guitar, field recordings, and, often in the background, synths, bowed double bass, accordion, and other stringed instruments. Ambient- and Takoma Park-adjacent, this follow-up to Ligurian Pastoral Vol. 1 complements the previous volume while demonstrating growth in terms of composition and musicianship.
The combination of English and Italian titles (Liguria is the region of Italy around Genoa) reflect the distinctiveness of Cedolin’s achievement here. Italian guitarists such as Mauricio Angeletti have been mining the American Primitive genre since at least the 1980s, and Cedolin brings this tradition into the modern era. His playing may draw on alternative music and the work of Fahey and Daniel Bachman (and perhaps Scott Tuma), but his unhurried approach and cinematic sense of space are uniquely compelling. Thus, while his two-finger picking recalls that of country blues masters such as Elizabeth Cotten, his compositions are accretive, building gradually and exploring melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic possibilities as they arise.
Most of the tracks begin and end with natural sounds (insects, wind, rain), giving the impression that the listener is encountering the music while on a hike through the countryside. The tunes are largely or entirely in open tunings and through-composed, driven by shifts in dynamics rather than repeated motifs. The ever-evolving sound palette includes plunks of banjo and lovely bowed bass on “Punta Martin” and “Forest Is for Rest” (get it?) and the emergence of a driving rhythm on “Acquasanta.”
Ligurian Pastoral Vol. II, like its predecessor, offers a healing salve for a weary digitized world awash in manufactured strife and AI-generated nonsense. Repeated listening, especially in a car or through headphones, reveals subtle details and variations. Cedolin presents Italy as I want to imagine it, a place where forests encroach on pre-Roman ruins frequented by shepherds who have swapped reed pipes for steel-string acoustics.
Davide Cedolin is a Ligurian based artist, mostly focused nowadays on guitar-oriented music, writing and painting. His latest cassette on the Island House label collects seven serene and unruffled meditations, mostly in finger picked acoustic guitar, but augmented sometimes with threads of bowed bass, lap steel and harmonica. In her review, Jennifer Kelly wrote that these compositions “open out into a kind of wide-horizoned dreaminess, an infinity pool of sound that stretches as far as you can see. Here Cedolin lists some guitar music that inspires him.
I wrote something about albums that somehow “clicked me” because of their great guitar works. Hope you’ll enjoy!
Sonic Youth — A Thousand Leaves (Geffen, 1998)
Maybe I could pick other albums from Sonic Youth, but this is the first one I discovered in real time when I was sixteen, bought on vinyl in a great record store named Distorsioni in Varazze (the town I’ve grown up in) that is closed now. I love this album from them for the natural blend of poppy refrains and very noisy rock elements, the mood, the track list. In my opinion it’s the most textured and rich record from SY, very open and experimental in its own way. And the first of the four times I’ve seen Sonic Youth live, it was in the period of A Thousand Leaves, so I feel very sensitive with this record. One track? “Sunday.” In general, it’s thanks to Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore that I heard for the first time about alternative tunings.
Pelt — Ayahuasca (VHF, 2001)
I took some time to “digest” the depth and the density of this one. It’s the record that introduced to me (in a very funny way, ha ha) to old time music and somehow to a different way to intend acoustic music and so guitar. I’ve also been captured by the contemplative and psychedelic aura of the whole album that later switched me on drone music as well. There’s not that much about Pelt live on YouTube from those years, but I’ve found an intense video that is really immersive. With Jack Rose, who already implemented the sound of the band with a more prominent acoustic guitar work, the transition from an electric-noise-drone skin to a new acoustic-mantra-folk structured one was completed. I’m still impressed about how borders in music are so vague and relative if there’s a real consciousness of what you are doing. And Pelt’s transition is the perfect case of the natural and organic evolution of a sound.
Grateful Dead — Workingman’s Dead (Warner, 1970)
In Europe the Dead didn’t have the same wide cultural echo as in North America. Everyone here knows The Doors, Bob Dylan or Neil Young but not as many people as in the States know the Grateful Dead. I heard of Workingman’s Dead at the end of the nineties but it took until my mid-twenties before I got interested in old records. I fell in love with the warm sound of this album, which actually has one of the most brilliant track lists ever to me. Each song is an amazing hit. There’s great guitar work all over the record from both Weir and Garcia, and it’s easy to understand why the sound of this album (and with the extension on the next, American Beauty,) has been intended to be the Americana sound by several music critics and producers. The way all the traditional country, blues and folk elements melt together is so natural and the way the guitars talk to each other is masterful. Also, I’m a huge fan of Jerry on pedal steel and in this record, there are a few of the best moments in his entire career playing that.
John Fahey — Blind Joe Death (Takoma, 1959)
I had a very nice chat with Jeff Tobias a few days ago inspired by a meme about American Primitive Guitar that at some point was ironically counterposing John Fahey lovers and haters. I totally see there’s this polarization about him, and I kind of get it. I did read How Bluegrass Destroyed My Life, watched interviews, and in my perception, his persona was seemingly contradictory and questionable on several aspects. But the guitar work itself, unquestionably, places him in a very relevant position if we think on what he triggered and how damn good he was. This album is the one I love the most and the one with which I've discovered him. I wouldn't consider Fahey as a direct and conscious influence for me but his taste for melodies and his tricks buzz in my head since the first time I heard them. Particularly “St. Louis Blues.”
Jack Rose — Kensington Blues (VHF, 2005)
Frankly, I didn’t listened to this album immediately. It took a couple of years before I knew of it thanks to a great musician from Genova and close fellow Paolo Tortora. It was some winter evening at his place, and I remember we listened to the entire record in silence, sipping rum. It warmed my intimate part, kind of healed me. And it wasn’t the rum, it was the way Jack Rose was able to convert remote feelings into some wild stream of consciousness, that to me still is, without forgoing the obvious technical skills, the best part of his playing. The way he was heartly connecting with the instrument and how he was truly one with the instrument. In this video of “Cross the North Fork,” you can see what I’m talking about.
Ryley Walker — Primerose Green (Tompkins Square, 2015)
Ryley is a terrific guitar player with a terrific voice. He’s simply perfect; when he plays and sings he has a unique voice. I love the sensitivity of his playing, his anarcho-prog-impro wilderness and his accuracy for harmonies and arrangements. This album is perhaps less eclectic compared to the recent ones but it has some of my prefered tracks from him, including this one.
Elizabeth Cotten — Folksongs and Instrumentals with Guitar (Folkways Records, 1958)
Same friend, another great suggestion. Paolo introduced me to Libba by sending this video link for “Freight Train,” probably around 2009. I was touched by her uniqueness. She basically built her own grammar to express her own language with such a graceful manner. This album is the first I bought by her on Discogs a few years ago, and its pure magic all over the length. I could spin this record on loop for days without either changing the side, whichever it is.
Hobart Smith — In Sacred Trust: The 1963 Fleming Brown Tapes (Smithsonian Folkways, 2005)
I was exploring YouTube videos of Elizabeth Cotten and I came across “Railroad Bill” with Hobart Smith on guitar. There’s an ocean of incredibly talented musicians out there, and the more I go further with this list, the more pop up in my mind. But just a very few can transport somewhere else in just a couple of seconds. His personal and fluid style of fingerpicking immediately caught me. Hobart was a master at banjo, guitar, fiddle and piano. In Sacred Trust: The 1963 Fleming Brown Tapes is an album of never-before-released work, taped by Fleming Brown back in the day. It’s a wonderful collection of hidden gems. My son who is eighteen months old already loves this CD.
Steve Gunn — Time Off (Paradise Of Bachelors, 2013)
Steve Gunn in 2013 was a name I’d already heard of, but it’s with this album that I got more deeper into his stuff. I’m a big fan of this period. Acoustic guitars were leading both the emotional and the structured parts of the tracks. His repetitive and hypnotic patterns mesmerized me. I love the “loop feeling” you can perceive sometimes, and I even love it more when you realize that it wasn’t a loop but a block with so many details that change around the main riff which keeps circularly going. There’s a lot of stuff from Gunn on YouTube, and this take of “Trailways Ramble,” from Live at Atlantic Sound Studios, (there are also more videos from this session) kills it. Played with a beautiful twelve string Guild in trio with Justin Tripp on bass and John Truscinski on drums, if you scan your body while listening, you can feel the rise of the theme through the flesh, in a similar way of feeling subtle sensations by the body scan during meditation practices.
Daniel Bachman — The Morning Star” (Three Lobed Recordings, 2018)
I met Daniel for the first time in 2013, so I should even name Jesus I’m A Sinner, the one I knew at first. But The Morning Star is the album that showed me other aspects of his art. This is the first recording from him where guitars slightly shift aside to give more space to the various ambient sounds and other instruments. I love how the guitar is relatively “simpler” even in the patterns somehow. It’s pensive, moody, capable to take your hand and guide you through the album; there’s an interesting sound research that matches also with the “invented” tunings. It’s brilliant how just the tuning of the instrument can influence the whole composition process. And, besides the artist that I admire and love so much, there’s even the man that is completely adorable. It’s nice to know that artists you like are sometimes great living beings as well. This set is completely acoustic. Each time I watch it, I feel as astonished by the wall of sound as the first listen.
Bola Sete — Ocean (Takoma, 1975)
This is the only nylon strings player I’ve mentioned in this list. Bola Sete was a Brazilian guitarist, mostly involved in traditional Bossa nova and samba in the early days. At some point in the 1970s, he met and eventually became friend with John Fahey and moved to the USA. In 1975 Takoma released Ocean, later repressed as Ocean Memories, which is an extraordinary journey through Brazilian folk music and the American Primitive Guitar. This album condenses his virtuoso style and his wild stream of playing at its best, opening worlds of suggestions with its wavy and sensitive flow that colors the album as a canvas.
Yasmin Williams — Urban Driftwood (Spinster, 2021)
This record has been rooting in my listening since it came out. I knew the previous album from Yasmin Williams but with this I got really into her work. There’s a beautiful virtuoso approach that melts into a world of tenderness; a sensitive style of playing that is both technical and emotional, alternating various methods and instruments such as acoustic guitar, harp guitar and kalimba. She’s graceful, making intricate compositions by apparent effortless gestures and moves. This piece is also inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. Really looking forward to what will come next. I love this absolutely gorgeous video of “Juvenescence” from the New York Guitar Festival sessions.
Ledward Kaapana and Friends — Waltz Of The Wind (Dancing Cat Records, 1998)
This guy simply blew my mind. I’ve been recently introduced to Ledward Kaapana and Hawaiian slack key guitar by Daniel. He’s been doing his thing since the 1970s at least; he has a very nurtured YouTube channel from where you can also find classes! His style is unique, and he has a terrific feel for the rhythmic parts. He’s got this joyful mood that brightens the melody patterns and generally rubs off on the atmosphere. The song “Radio Hula” is probably his most popular hit and there’s this version of it on his channel that is so cool.
Daniel Bachman — Almanac Behind (Three Lobed Recordings, 2022)
Here I am with the last release from Daniel Bachman, who I already named. This album/film is something that elevates Daniel’s work on another peak. In my opinion, this is the most authentic and touching contemporary political and artistic statement of the last years. There’s an explicit vision of what the climate catastrophe is and how we already crossed the safety guard. This concept resonates in the folds of the sound, sculpting it with new elements such the digital post process (cut-and-pasted slide guitar, pitch drops, glitches), AM and FM radio and a horizontal view of the mix, which knocks you to the couch with ease. There’s something in this album that goes even far beyond music and arts. It’s a hub.
