Seabuckthorn - Crossing

Usually, when somebody mentions a solo guitar album, you immediately get a notion that you will get to hear somebody who has nimble fingers, picking on the acoustic version of the instrument, with varying quality of technique and even more varying sense of imagination. I mean, you really have to be of John Fahey’s or Jack Rose’s level to stand out.

Even those giants of the guitar didn’t simply satisfy themselves with picking on an acoustic six-string, widening their range to slide, 12-string, electric...exactly what is needed to give your music depth, range, and imagination.

Englishman Andy Cartwright who works under the name Seabuckthorn is also somebody who doesn’t want to limit his range, well aware that there are practically limitless possibilities, but for which you really have to know your instrument inside out and have a solid level of imagination. That is exactly what he shows on Crossing, his tenth, most recent album.

Working on his art and craft since 2009, this time around Cartwright has decided to use a bowed resonator guitar putting it through a series of expected and unexpected post-rock/ambient/modern classical soundscapes.

While on the opening “Crossing I” you get the ‘standard’ if you can call it that sound of a string ensemble of varying size, “The Cloud And The Redness”, say sounds like a piece of electrified Godspeed! You Black Emperor interlude, “It Can Ashen” like a missing piece from the Labradford catalog you always wanted to hear and “The After Quiet” like a combination of all of the above. Don’t be surprised if some film director picks up “Cleanse” for the upcoming dark thriller he is working on.

You may call Crossing anything you like and try to fit it into any genre you want, but you cannot simply label it as a solo guitar album, even though it is that too. What it does is shows what you can accomplish when you know what you want with your music and how to get there.