#4467, Music for Guitars

Get into guitar music by New York’s Diego Barber, LA-Via-Istanbul Film Composer Deniz Cuylan, Welsh guitarist Gwenifer Raymond, and songwriter Ben Harper on lap steel guitar. Plus, music from a cautionary environmental album by English guitarist Mike Cooper.

Behold the Welsh guitarist and shredder Gwenifer Raymond who adapts the “American Primitive” style - but for old weird Wales. She joins us from Brighton, England to play aggressive and melodic instrumental guitar tunes from her new record, Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain. (Originally recorded for the Soundcheck Podcast, Nov. 2020.)

There’s new music by guitarist and composer Diego Barber, inspired directly by the loop-and-groove-based minimalism of Steve Reich, and featuring the stacked vocals of guest musician Theo Bleckmann. Then, listen to music by Los Angeles based Turkish composer and multi-instrumentalist Deniz Cuylan where his classical guitar builds on patterns, like “ripples in water caused by droplets,” and spiderwebs. (Hush Hush Records Press.)

Hear British-born prolific experimental steel guitar player Mike Cooper drawing on Hawaiian Slack Key and Lap Steel guitar, together with field recordings of places that will suffer because of climate change – Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, St Lucia, and Martinique. Plus, “American Primitive” fingerstyle guitar music by Grammy-winning songwriter Ben Harper, on his Monteleone lap steel guitar. -Caryn Havlik

#4467, Music for Guitars (First Aired 3/3/2021)

ARTIST: Gwenifer Raymond
WORK: Hell for Certain [1:00]
RECORDING: Recorded for the Soundcheck Podcast, Nov. 2020
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available. 
INFO: Appears on her 2020 album, Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain, via Tompkins Square Records.

ARTIST: Diego Barber, feat. Theo Bleckmann
WORK: Drago [6:08]
RECORDING: Drago
SOURCE: Sunnyside
INFO: diegobarber.bandcamp.com

ARTIST: Deniz Cuylan
WORK: She Was Always Here [5:51]
RECORDING: No Such Thing as Free Will
SOURCE: Hush Hush Records | due out March 19, 2021
INFO: hushhushrecords.bandcamp.com

ARTIST: Gwenifer Raymond
WORK: Gwaed Am Gwaed [5:39]
RECORDING: Recorded for the Soundcheck Podcast, Nov. 2020
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available. 
INFO: Appears on her 2020 album, Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain, via Tompkins Square Records.

ARTIST: Gwenifer Raymond
WORK: Eulogy for Dead French Composers [6:02]
RECORDING: Recorded for the Soundcheck Podcast, Nov. 2020
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available. 
INFO: Appears on her 2020 album, Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain, via Tompkins Square Records.

ARTIST: Gwenifer Raymond
WORK: Hell for Certain [5:52]
RECORDING: Recorded for the Soundcheck Podcast, Nov. 2020
SOURCE: This performance not commercially available. 
INFO: Appears on her 2020 album, Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain, via Tompkins Square Records.

ARTIST: Mike Cooper
WORK: The Drowned World (Jalan Batu after rain) [5:54]
RECORDING: Playing With Water
SOURCE: Room 40
INFO: room40.bandcamp.com

ARTIST: Ben Harper
WORK: Istanbul [1:53]
RECORDING: Winter Is For Lovers 
SOURCE: ANTI‐ Records
INFO: https://benharper.ffm.to/wifl