Customer Reviews

Slider- Ambient Excursions for Pedal Steel Guitar

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Modern music fans recognize Bruce Kaphan's name from his work with American Music Club, Chris Isaak, REM, Black Crowes, John Lee Hooker and David Byrne. It's a rare treat to get an instrumental album from such an accomplished sideman. This collection of instrumental "new age" music was originally recorded for the prestigious Hearts Of Space label, and its tone is consistent with the sound of their popular radio show.

The tunes are dreamy, multi-layered steel tracks, dripping with echoes and punctuated with diamond edges. Bruce Kaphan combines his double-neck pedal steel, the recording studio, and a few tasty acoustic instruments to create beautiful ambient tapestries. This CD is on the leading edge of steel guitar art music. It's one of my personal favorites.

If you've never heard 'Clouds', you're in for a treat. I stumbled upon this song on my cable station's Soundscapes channel, and fell in love with it the first time I heard it. Bruce's music is pure magic. I never knew the pedal steel guitar could produce such a full and sensuous sound until I heard this album. He is a master of the pedal steel guitar.

Like a true pioneer, Bruce takes you down several paths, ranging from a couple of eastern-style tracks, to more traditional 'new-age' compositions. Not to leave country & western totally ignored, his 'High Desert' explores the lost art of western music. 'Outpost' conveys a sense of loneliness and isolation that its name implies.

Don't take my word for it. You can listen to every track on this CD from his website - www.brucekaphan.com. Then buy it!

When Bruce Kaphan's "Slider" came out in 2000, as one of the last official releases on the Hearts Of Space label, it made quite a splash-besides the English pedal steel player B.J. Cole and the equally obscure but still immensely talented Chas Smith, not much ambient/space music had been heard from the steel guitar as a source instrument.

"Slider" changed that in a big way: The track "Country & Eastern" substituted a slide guitar where a sitar or esraj might have been; "Clouds" and "Big Brain Small Brain" went off into Jeff Pearce/Michael Brook "infinite guitar" territory, but using the slide as opposed to a heavily processed six string or e-bow. Six years later, "Slider" sounds just as fresh. This is an essential purchase.

I live in rural Montana and one night came home to hear the music from this album being played on National Public Radio's 'Ambient Music' on a Saturday evening. I didn't know who wrote the music, but I knew I immediately LOVED these selections of solo guitar I was hearing. They sounded (to me) almost exactly like a second album of Gustavo Santaolalla's music to his score to 'Brokeback Mountain'; and he won an Oscar for that. I heard the composers name at the end of selections and ordered it from Amazon. When I received the cd of 'Slider' and played it I was immediately drawn in by the compositions. The warm and enveloping sounds of Bruce Kaphan's pedal steel guitar are amazingly luxuriating. This cd is now one of my most played albums; one I cannot be too far away from.

Bruce Kaphan's Slider (2005) is aptly named as listening to the album evokes spacey, "sliding" sensations. Those of you expecting a Hawaiian trip will be in for an instrumental, atmospheric odyssey with pedal steel guitar and assorted percussion. Kaphan paints moody, ambient landscapes which evoke one's imagination and it could easily be the soundtrack for a spacey movie.

Yes...this is very enjoyable material!

BUT--with this and Jeff Pearce and others...it's as if NONE of you have ever heard Pink Floyd's DARK SIDE OF THE MOON!! It seems as if everyone is "astounded" that there is a use for the pedal steel "other than country or perhaps soundtracks" out there! Has David Gilmore's masterful use and playing of it on that and other Pink Floyd work been forgotten THAT easily?!? YES...it wasn't the "primary" instument, but it's inclusion and useage and tone individualized and created with and for it are extraordinary and ground-breaking!

Wake up and smell the coffee brewing...oh ambient fanciers! :-)