LOREN CONNORS

RED MARS

(FAMILY VINEYARD, 2011)

Late 60s prog devotees may be aware of the massive influence that American primitive guitar genius John Fahey had on so many of our guitarists, not to mention the effect he had on radio presenter and foremost champion John Peel. Graced with surreal songtitles and annotation, Fahey’s music was as big and arcane as America itself. Yet in the years before his death in 2001, the grumpy guitarist declared his awe of Brooklyn-based avantblues maestro Loren Connors who’s released countless records on the Family Vineyard imprint, sometimes as Guitar Roberts or Loren ‘Mazzacane’ Connors.

Picking up Fahey’s battered torch, Connors has issued at least one, occasionally five, albums a year since 1978 of what he once called “Venusian blues”, sometimes collaborating with his life partner Suzanne Langille or guitarists Jim O’Rourke and Alan Licht. Spectral, haunted and straddling emotions between enraged pain and gorgeous melancholy, time stands still when Connors plays. Space is a key element in the slow motion, tone sketches that are primarily influenced by abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko.

Despite his prolific output, Connors is barely known in the UK, although those who hear his work are rarely the same again. His albums are often recorded live and include the beautiful Airs, NYC sound paintings My Brooklyn, 9th Avenue, and The Bridge as well as the ongoing The Departing Of A Dream series. But it’s 2011’s Red Mars that packs Connors’ traits into one set.

Recorded at home and live in Brooklyn with electric upright bassist Margarida Garcia, it transports the musician from New York to the cosmos with five jaggedly-evocative excursions that open up a new galaxy for guitar playing on their tumultuous journey. Starting with On Our Way, Connors extracts deep space moans, capturing the inestimable loneliness of the planets (or anywhere) with shimmering curls of the lovely melody allowed to poke through the eerie detritus, while the string bass impersonates some kind of horned alien beast. As the track drifts weightlessly for 10 minutes, the feeling inevitably occurs that no guitar has ever sounded like this.

The two-part title track goes deeper into the voyage, and all sense of time lost as Connors flows with unearthly ambience, stridently screaming on Part II before he vividly depicts a black hole. Self-explanatory Showers Of Meteors ups the intensity to coruscating noise, before Little Earth’s gentler touchdown; its luminescent vapour trails resonate long after the last lunar note.

If Fahey’s tormented ghost lies anywhere, it’s in Connors’ beautifully-uncompromising particle showers, cackling that at least one brave virtuoso took the reins in realigning the outer limits of the guitar.