Steffen Basho-Junghans – Is

Architects of Harmonic Rooms and Records

There’s something tantalisingly unreal about these direct to DAT solo twelve-string guitar compositions, recorded between 2000 and 2006.  Capturing almost exclusively the twang, scrape and buzz of the strings, the instrument sounds almost disembodied, a shimmering, glistening, glassy surface with barely any hint of the guitar’s resonating chamber, let alone any sense of the environment in which it was played.  There’s a sense of dislocation and separation, an almost rootless unease, as though the music is caught somewhere between the transcendent and corporeal.

Steffan Basho-Junghans’ guitar style is a curiously restless hybrid, based on similar ground to Philip Henry’s synthesis of John Fahey Americana with Asian influences yet capable of incorporating a minimalism that recalls some of Tetuzi Akiyama’s more motorik excursions.  The album could fairly be described as an exploration of what might link these seemingly irreconcilable extremes, teeming with possibilities yet never quite locating an easy solution.  His inquisitive, fidgety investigation never quite settles.  It’s perhaps a quality of his instrument’s timbre: without much in the way of resonance or decay there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of room in which he can relax and let the sound take over, the result being that he worries at the edges of his ideas, ceaselessly attacking with his fingers, trying to locate a way in.

Such a description might make it sound as though the album is a failed attempt, yet it’s anything but.  Tangled clusters of notes juxtapose fruitful – if fleeting – overtones.  Minimalist investigations of a single chord reveal a teeming wealth of shifting detail upon close listening.  An almost wilful awkwardness warps the compositions out of shape, thwarting the music before it can lock into steady thousand-yard stare repetition.  The moments in which he gives his slide playing space to sing project a disproportionate country context onto the rest of the music, even when he’s going places that leave any notions of the pastoral far behind.  It’s rare to hear a musician who’s anywhere near this active, eager and engaged, with every single note deployed purposefully.

Born in East Germany, Basho-Junghans spent a good deal of his life with only intermittent access to guitar music that inspired him.  Tapes would be dubbed again and again and passed around his peer group.  Shortly after the Wall came down, opening up access to a wider range of music, he was forced to reinvent his technique after an operation for carpal tunnel syndrome.  He would relentlessly explore single chores or play on one string, developing a keen ear for minute sonic detail.  Such biographical details are revealing.  Basho-Junghans’ explorations of his twelve-string are hungrily outward looking, relentlessly teasing at ideas, more concerned with tugging them into different possible shapes than accepting any easy means of incorporation.  His ceaseless questions are easily as engaging as the answers of lesser guitarists.

This 2009 album, released on Harry Wheeler‘s Harmonic Rooms imprint, comes beautifully packaged in heavyweight 12” vinyl with an accompanying digital download (with a download-only option for the physical media-challenged).  It’s not so much a re-release as it is a relaunch: determined to achieve a good result for a musician he justifiably loves, Wheeler has put together a short film on Basho-Junghans and is embarking on a second round of promotion two years after the fact.  So while it may initially seem unusual to be so publically late to a party, in practise an intimate artist/label relationship and an ongoing interest in spreading the word about great music are both things more people should be championing.  Too many great records get lost in the deluge; there’s no need to imitate the sterile review/release practice of an industry that’s rightly dying on its ass due to its crippling inability to think beyond the short term or to actually care for and respect its musicians.  Well done Wheeler for coming up with a better idea.

-Seth Cooke –