28th February 2011
Guitarist Bobby Jones, who records as I’ve Lost, has just released Scáth M’anam, his first album on the Relaxed Machinery label. It follows Dissociative Fugue, a two-piece EP released on the Feedback Loop netlabel last year.
Scáth M’anam is a Gaelic phrase which can translate as “shadow of my soul”. Bobby hearkened to his Irish roots for the title, and manages to make an ambient electric guitar sound a bit like Gaelic music at times. He skillfully evokes a windswept, storm-battered Irish shore – a counterpart, external shadow.
As he usually does, Bobby recorded his guitar live, in single takes, The range of guitar textures is astonishing, by turns childlike and industrial, wistful and seething. The album is a piece of both personal introspection and epic ambition. These shadows are rich with such paradoxes.
The album is made up of two pieces. I Wish I Could Fly is an 8-part epic journey running over 71 minutes.
It begins with wind and waves, birds and a quiet drone. We hear, as if echoing in a seaside cave, ethereal, wraith-like tones (almost resembling voices) – haunted, imploring, insatiable. There’s a sense of endless space, flying over a raging ocean, or in a vast half-submerged cave. The next section features a simple, plaintive melody – perhaps mourning and remembering, but wishing to forget.
Guitar textures range from classic, mostly clean-sounding strummed chords, to turbo-charged EBow, to an overdriven, mechanical buzz.
In the third section, plucked notes sounding like a low-passed steel drum echo-dance into space, building in volume as the storm grows; startling chords crash like waves on the rocky shore and scatter to mist.
In the fifth, over an EBow loop like a slow violin/cello duet, the guitar sings a seaside lament that flies away over the waves.
The sixth section is an airy, ghostly song, with Bobby tapping or strumming the muted strings for a percussive effect, suggesting shackles, a desire to escape – or transcend. A far-away voice-like part joins in, singing, angelic but wounded.
In the final section, the overdriven guitar, fleeting, ephemeral, ghostly, fades into background. Another picking part takes over, with the effect of bringing us back to the stark present, out of the dream. We are where we are, despite all aspirations and regrets. One powerful, savage, roaring chord intercedes; the shadow remains ever-present, and gets the final word.
The second piece, Ghosts on the Wind, is like a coda. A few mostly-clean, picked notes – short phrases that tail off and scatter. We can’t fly, but the ghosts still do, and they’re all around us.
Throughout the album, the colors are muted, shades of gray. Some days it rains outside, and some days it rains in the heart. This is perfect music for such rainy, windy days. At times it reminds me of ambient-phase vidnaObmana – a very high compliment in my universe.
Bobby’s music is fearless in its quest for deep meaning, and heart-baring in its honesty. This is another fine release for the Relaxed Machinery label – highly recommended!
Source – http://eyescastdown.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/album-review-scath-manam/