Search - Steffen Basho-Junghans :: Rivers & Bridges

Junkmedia Review - Straight forward, solid outing

junkmedia | Los Angeles, CA | 02/21/2003

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Few genres seem as resistant to change as folk music. However, looking back at the works by guitar virtuosos John Fahey, Leo Kottke and Robbie Basho on the Takoma Records label will convince you otherwise. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, this trailblazing group of musicians combined Middle Eastern trance, North American folk, Indian ragas and old steelstring traditions with a deliberate experimental aesthetic that demanded a new set of standards by which solo acoustic guitarist work should be measured. Steffen Basho-Junghans carries on the Takoma torch proudly while bravely barreling forward to continually reinvent, reinterpret and retool the groundwork laid down by its premiere musicians. (Trivia: he legally changed his name to include Basho as homage to his foremost musical inspiration.) Born in 1953 in Saxony, Germany, Basho-Junghans co-founded the folk group Wacholder in 1978 and soon began performing solo 6 and 12 string guitar concerts in his homeland before eventually recording albums on his own Blue Moment Arts label in the late '80s and early '90s. Rivers and Bridges, his fifth stateside LP since 2000, is Basho-Junghans' newest release. "The River Suite" opens the album with a trickling arpeggio that flows into a nearly 22-minute long deluge of shifting melodies and tempos that float the listener down a maelstrom of anguish, melancholy and joy. Much like Fahey, Basho-Junghans relies heavily on the stylistic use of repetition to convey a distinct array of dissimilar moods, and he does so successfully. During the 17-minute "The Takoma Bridge Incident," a peaceful Eastern sounding harmony gives way to a pandora's box of guitar technique that picks, strums and stretches chords into new dimensions. Shorter tracks such as "Hear the Winds Coming" and "Rainbow Dancing," both under five-minutes, prove that such a large canvas isn't necessary. Here, Basho-Junghans settles into a more traditional call and response structure that finds him revisiting harmonies that are still fresh in the listeners' ears. Out of his American releases, Rivers and Bridges is certainly Basho-Junghans' most straight forward. Song of the Earth was presented as a sonic exploration of the four elements -- fire, air, earth and water; Inside and Waters in Azure strove toward microtonal textures through unorthodox tapping and picking styles, and Landscapes in Exile functioned as a brash aural anomaly filled with flowery drones. However, all of these albums share a unique organic quality uncommon in today's digital world: Junghans opts to record live into a DAT without any overdubs or separate tracks. Although this has little, or no, effect on a listener's initial impressions, repeated spins of Rivers and Bridges can't help but make one wax nostalgic for a time when substance flourished over surfaces. Ronald Andryshak
Junkmedia Review"