Jack Rose And Glenn Jones

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Tue 23 November 2004 // 20:00

Q presents JACK ROSE + GLENN JONES
(Tues 23 Nov/7.33pm/£4)

Two far flung members of pivotal US free folk rock bands go solo with their guitars. American roots via the Blues and the Indian Delta.

JACK ROSE, the lead guitarist from the amazing psych folk group PELT, positions himself as one of the few heirs to the solo folk guitar tradition paved by John Fahey and Leo Kottke or even Blind Willie Johnson, whose 'Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground' is radically interpreted by Rose. His almost ghostly, spectral melodies float over the drone instead of within it. He is influenced by the Indian Ragas and the music he makes is an open ended hymn to the spirits that enter into his musical sphere. Song cycles flow like the hot steamy Ganges through the cool, high Appalachian mountains.

There is something familiar and unsettling about the sound that Rose is creating. Rooted but ethereal, old and battered but fresh and invigorating, it's the sound of an artist slowly making his way through history and coming out the other side with something all his own.

GLENN JONES is the exceptional fingerpicker from CUL DE SAC (who have to be one of the most underrated bands from the US underground, intertwining elements of surf rock, Krautrock, Middle Eastern trance, folk music, and post-rock psychedelia). He has learned from JOHN FAHEY about experimenting with American guitar traditions alongside contemporary sound art.

'This is the Wind that Blows it Out' - his solo album... winds its way through rich expanses of varied stylistic terrain, charting a rich and unique course. 'American Primitive' folk and blues, Spanish guitar, slack- key, rustic Mississippi Delta slide and classical forms cozy up fluently to one another, sometimes within the same tune.