#michael grigoni

[mon-nid]

[dustedmagazine]

Michael Grigoni *  Pan•American—New World, Lonely Ride (Kranky)

Mark Nelson has long constructed aching, elegiac reveries out of slow-blooming guitar tone, with Labradford first and later Pan•American. His solo works do not proceed as much as they hover, the scratch of picking subsumed into moody, sustained auras that can evoke dawn light, rainy introspection, memory and loss. His partner here, Michael Grigoni, is less well known but like-minded, favoring pedal and lap steel and dobro, to add faint suggestions of Americana to these lingering compositions.

Grigoni teaches religion at Wake Forest, and though he keeps his music and academic careers separate, it is not difficult to infer a spiritual attunement in these ten limpid pools of sound. Per the titles, these cuts meditate on nature, evoking rivers, canyons, sunlight in their placid textures. “Silver Streams,” for instance, leads with a sound that is, indeed, silvery, derived, I would guess, out of pedal or lap steel but tethered only loosely to what you’d think of as guitar sound. A bit of picking frames this eerie vibration, just a few notes scattered across the surface, and the rough echo of footsteps emerges sporadically, just out of reach.

It’s hard to separate these compositions into discrete movements. They flow, one into the other, with a watery ease. Still “South Canyon” is, perhaps the most beautiful, its looming, radiant sonic textures allowed to hang and shift and evolve over prolonged moments. You can just barely make out some sort of field recording under this one, though not to place it accurately. A crackle like campfire, a howl like distant wind gives this cut a wondering naturalism.

Not much is shared about how these two artists came together or what their work process might have been, but they evidently share an aesthetic. If you’ve enjoyed recent albums by Pan•American, you’ll find much to explore and enjoy here in glacially paced, luminous movements of pure, enveloping sound.

Jennifer Kelly

[radiophd]

michael grigoni / pan•american -- mirage/afternoon

[mon-nid]

[grrlmusic]

Michael Grigoni & Pan•American - New World, Lonely Ride

[inthewindtunnel]

Michael Grigoni * Pan•American

Mirage/Afternoon

[inthewindtunnel]

Michael Grigoni * Pan•American

Dream of Someone

[mon-nid]