By Stuart Broomer
British Guitarist Daniel Thompson works in a direct line from Derek Bailey
and John Russell, somehow mediating the spikiness of the former and the
warmth of the latter in a richly distinctive personal art, simultaneously
touching traditions that stretch from historical acoustic archtop artistry
(e.g., Eddie Lang, George Van Eps, et al.) to engaging an instrument of
multiple voices from strummed and picked and plucked to massaged and scraped
strings, tapped-upon bodies and traditional chordal vocabularies
surrendering to dense clusters, sometimes rich in dissonant harmonics. In
his work, Thompson embraces both the tradition and the instrument as
invitation to random material speculation, the body as drum, the string as
longitudinal invitation to scratch, tuning keys as material assists, and all
the other things about the instrument that arise upon material inspection
beyond any initial impression. His label Empty Birdcage Records is rich in
varied materials, though here he turns up on other labels as well.
Daniel Thompson - Violet (Empty Birdcage Records, 2025)
To enter the solo CD Violet is to immediately find oneself in a
transcendent state, one in which time is simultaneously suspended and
insistent, a musical language of startling intimacy, attenuated gestures and
under-voiced reflections. Tracks are simply numbered from “Improvisation
One” to “Improvisation Five”; their lengths vary from relative brevity,
4’31” for “Three”, to the near epic “Four” at 13’ 26”. “One” begins as a
series of evenly strummed dissonant clusters eventually following a series
of distinct evolutions. “No. 2” shadows a ground between intimacy and
invisibility, sparse gestures on a sea of silence, each new shape as
immediate as thought, each minute gesture a kind of micro-composition,
bright, isolated harmonics poised against strummed dissonances, sometimes
slowing, micro-gestures laid further apart amid a presence that suggests the
guitar might be breathing. There’s an exalted level of attention paid to
series of micro-gestures – a buzz, a harmonic, paired notes, a 10-minute
reverie stretching toward its own disappearance. It’s followed by “No. 3”’s
(relatively) loud, fast, chaotic and insistent pace, characterized by sudden
shifts in density. “Four” is a master class in diverse approaches shaped
into a single work, including an extended passage of high-speed scratched
tones. “Five” begins as perfect reverie, with a couple of expansive
high-speed bursts, before it returns to a delicate placidity and an ultimate
embrace of silence. Like every work here, its evolution feels as natural as
breathing. The numbering system is abandoned for the final title track:
“Violet” is an eight second burst of insistence that suggests a looped
electric guitar.
John Edwards/Daniel Thompson - Where the Butterflies Go (Earshots
Recordings, 2025)
This string duo recording chooses the most traditional of string
compositions as its model, a Four Seasons with its tracks named
from “Summer” to “Autumn” to “Winter” to end speculatively and positively
with a brief “Spring” of thrumming to suggest new and future life. Like the
other life here, it’s the sense of the closely shared space that gives it
its special character.
That opening “Summer” is a genuine hive of sound, brooking scant distinction
for its opening minutes, densely plucked acoustic guitar and plucked or
bowed bass presenting as a single instrument, the bass replicating the
pitches of the lower four strings of the guitar and dropping them an octave,
even picking, plucking and spiccato bowing acting as a singular continuum.
When the notion of individuation asserts itself, what had been singular
simply asserts itself as dialogue, retaining a strong sense of cooperation.
At nearly 21 minutes playing time, “Autumn” represents roughly half the
year. It’s a dense dialogue consisting of arco bass and scraped/
wiped high-pitched guitar (they can still overlap in frequency and density),
the delicate maelstrom reducing to silence only to gradually rise again with
a developing hive of potential. Instruments can usually be distinguished,
but that almost seems beside the point of this exalted, telepathic
improvising. In the concluding moments, the instruments grow increasingly
distinct, the bass insistently bowed, the guitar chorded tunefully,
suggesting another evolution is imminent.
“Winter” is a whimper and a scrape, a jangle of disconnected elements
slipping toward meaning, a haunted echo of a prepared instrument suddenly
given to dizzying chording and lightening-fast picking, some body drumming
and the storm is unleashed with the liveliest and least comforting season
demanding and overwhelming attention before breaking into an almost
pointillist duo of eliding bass tones and rapid guitar strumming, then
slipping into a zone of microscopically detailed, evanescent figures, all
together grinding toward life’s refresher course called “Spring”.
Tom Jackson/ Daniel Thompson - Dark Kitchen (Confront Recordings 2025)
Dedicated to Derek Bailey and Tony Coe, this is another series of duo free
improvisations, a format in which Thompson excels and in which his fitting
partners, here the clarinetist Tom Jackson whose recordings encompass work
with a range of improvisers, are similarly versed in cooperative creation,
in an intensive attention to detail, to finding mystery, to unravelling it
and to refolding it into another mystery. The longest work here is the
functionally titled “Improvisation One”, a 20-minute piece in which Jackson
presents as polyvocal, virtuosic and injured songbird, rapid-fire runs
sometimes stretching toward dissolution, before some pastoral re-launch of
bell-toned and dissonant guitar harmonics gradually restores the clarinet.
Three shorter tracks are more concentrated, less free ranging.
“Improvisation Two” begins with a densely expressionistic clarinet solo,
eventually matched by a subtly complex guitar accompaniment that becomes an
increasingly significant subtext to Jackson’s compounding bird calls.
“Three”, highlighting the duo’s interactive facility, is a high-speed, up
and down, back and forth dialogue; “Four” foregrounds Jackson’s lyricism
while Thompson creates a quietly unpredictable and abstract soundscape, each
gradually becoming more actively conversational.
