Thank goodness! Marisa Anderson is back with her 'Cloud Corner' album on Thrill Jockey in tow. The intimate and epic spaces and images created by her solo electric guitar are something else. The music track 'n' trails American folk music, 20th century minimalism and West African guitar idioms.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=15&v=Kq5xnUHRENI

Marisa tunes are becoming more revelatory and emotional. Written and recorded in a period of political and personal upheaval, the new album was created as a refuge, an ode to stillness in an era of ceaseless noise. Marisa Anderson’s Cloud Corner is an album of remarkably intimate beauty, tranquillity in times of turmoil. A great example is the sorrowful “Angel’s Rest,” a eulogy to one of Anderson’s favourite trails near her Portland home, which was devastated in 2017 by fire. “Sant Feliu de Guíxols” elicits the beauty of the coastal Spanish town, this is countered by a consciously happy song triggered by a conversation with a fan who accused Anderson of only playing sad songs. Anderson uses a slide and incorporates microtonal elements on “Lament,” a song inspired by images of the Syrian refugee crisis. The palpable emotional weight of these pieces are all invariably tied to Anderson’s capacity to create such feelings with her composition, timbre and tonal choices.

The backbone for her music is her undeniable mastery of North American traditions of country, folk, and blues but she owes a debt to the Tuareg style of guitar playing. Anderson was influenced by artists she played or recorded with such as Mdou Moctar, Kildjate Moussa Albadé, and Ahmoudou Madassane.

A curious and gifted player, Anderson has spent over 35 years of playing forging her singular, instantly recognizable voice. Come feel it move through you.

AUGHISKY (or ‘water horse’) is a shape-shifting creature that lurks in the darkest depths of instrumental weirdness, drone and noise. But being always unpredictable and unclassifiable, sometimes it takes other forms to disguise its true nature.

Bristol born Lorcán Thompson fuses ambient electric guitar, voice and electronic soundscapes to create elegiac and dreamlike sound pictures.