Jeff Parker
★★★★★ Forfolks INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM. CD/DL/LP
LA-based Tortoise guitarist spins filigree patterns of folk-jazz mystery.
A linchpin member of Tortoise and Isotope 217, Jeff Parker defined Chicago’s ’90s post-rock sound as much as John McEntire, Bundy K. Brown or David Grubbs, his intricate, loop-driven minimalism occupying a bright new colour within the Venn diagram of jazz, folk, blues, funk and drone harmonics. On this, the follow-up to 2020’s rich and multilayered Suite For Max
Brown, he is alone with just his guitar and effects and the results are mesmerising. Much like the late free improv guitarist Derek Bailey, Parker can unpick a standard with meticulous style, taking a classic like My Ideal and revealing its grand inner workings. Yet while his cover of Thelonious Monk’s Ugly Beauty reveals a kinship with a fellow master of unadorned melodicism, it’s on hypnotic original compositions such as Excess Success or reworked pieces like La Jetée that Parker’s true genius shines through, an ability to create entire new sonic worlds from the tiniest of elements. There’s nothing there, and then suddenly there is everything.