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The Solo Joint (SP,2005)**°
Solo Joint is Jose Sarmiento, guitar, Fernando Herrera, guitar & organ, Charlie Gonzalez, percussion, Toni Ruiz, guitar, vocal, loops, mix.
This is a collection of home-recorded improvisations on guitar, often with open tunings and mostly very loose ends, never looking for structures, but only building up on the mood of the fingerpickings which almost the guitar-with-the-performer (in this order) create. Sometimes, like the opener “The Golden Crescent”, these sound like campfire improvisations without the hearth and fire, focusing into the empty space, but more often are almost too private, meditative sessions which spins and spins around. This is completely a mood thing, at times, comparable to the most esoteric moments of Satwa (see review on next page). Even when the guitars are melodic, the chords are so loosly directing, the effect of turning around and spinning creating something “psychedelic”.
Two tracks are live improvisations as a quartet, with some percussion, vocal mournings and sound loops. “Me Voy bueno 1” might be my favourite track : a melodic picking open blues tune-or-whatever spin with a perfectly fitting almost meccano-like guitar case rhythm, with some changing and almost losing-it-into cloud-staring rhythmic pulses near the end, but still just unconsciously ? directed enough to make its own sense of being almost deliberate.
No track is really too long or ever boring, and the mix of all improvisations is compiled well. For me it is a very enjoyable CD but I think it will mostly be attractive especially to those who are able to accept the essence of just moody and loose psychedelic acoustic guitar spinning wheels.
Group's presentation :
"The Solo Joint is a music project created by Toni Ruiz in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Canary Islands (Spain) in 2001, mostly based on home-recorded acoustic guitar instrumentals, sometimes with the help of a multi-track desk pc, adding voice and loops overdubs. He’s recorded a ton of instrumental acoustic tracks, some improvised, other structured and even sung. A webpage about the Solo Joint is being prepared in www.myspace.com/thesolojoint
Carlos González on percussion, José Sarmiento and the argentinian Fernando Herrera on guitars are members of the project since early 2004. With Toni (guitar and mixing), they have recorded more tracks, changing the name to Huaco. A Huaco demo was sent to Rock de Lux (Barcelona mag, www.rockdelux.com), being reviewed favourably in the December 2005 issue:
[as translated from Spanish] “Now that a new tribe of folk singer-songwriters come back to ask the attention of a platoon of fans, it’s opportune to review bands with the lysergic oscillation of Huaco. The aim of this flowing association of canary and Argentinean musicians is transparent and healthy: elaborate acoustic mantras that work on between rock, jazz and folk, where the free improvisation fly over logic lapses. And songs like “Me Voy Bueno Bizarre” and “Come On Boys” carry out with aplomb and keep our pupils dilated.”
From the tape sent to Psyche Van Het Folk, tracks 2, 6 and 7 are really from Huaco project.
A third off-shot project –still without name- from the Solo Joint, with the voice of Artemi, is being prepared, adding acoustic arranges and melody voices to Emilio Prados, César Vallejo and Bertolt Brecht poems, shaping a more straight, song-format to be presented early next year.
Noted or not in the tracks, musical tastes of the members of the band include Robbie Basho, John Fahey, Fred Neil, Richie & Mimi Fariña, Sandy Bull, The Seventh Sons, Atahualpa Yupanqui, Violeta Parra, Jose Larralde, Gabor Szabo, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Jimmy Giuffre, Sun Ra, Tim Buckley, Mel Lyman Family albums, Incredible String Band, Syd Barrett, Caetano Veloso, Joao Gilberto, Bola Sete, Baden Powell, Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, Federico Mompou, Jim O’Rourke, Richard Bishop, Jack Rose, Jackie-O Motherfucker, Town And Country, Harris Newman or Glenn Jones, among others.
