Requiem for the Primitive

I guess when I first heard John Fahey - God,Time & Causality - which was a recommendation from Thurston Moore on the slightly iffy emusic.com, it was one of those moments every music junkie yearns for. Time stops as the music plays and you realise that you've never heard anything quite the same before. New windows opened up to me and I spent the winter of 2005 and the spring & summer of 2006 listening to as much Fahey as i could get my hands on and on re-tuning my crappy little british guitar to try and evince new and interesting song forms from its dusty little body.
God, Time & Causality was a bit of a milestone for me because not only does it showcase Fahey's unrivalled skill as a player, but it also re-imagines some of his older songs (another version of Red Pony yadda yadda) none of which I'd heard before anyway.

It was a few years before I started buying vinyl again, but here we are anyway and I snap up pretty much any Fahey vinyl that I come across. Not found that famous Blind Joe Death album that always seems to make it into people weirdest albums lists- but I do own a copy of The Yellow Princess, Death Chants, Breakdowns and Military Waltzes and, today I picked up Requia.

The Yellow Princess is really old and crappy and scratched and has been through the ringer more than once, its play is affected a little by this. Requia is not too bad really considering its age, but, to be honest it doesn't matter. This is Fahey at his most playful and annoying, delving into his record collection or playing with tapes. Side two is basically one long piece as Fahey twiddles and mixes in snatches of radio noise, music and other ambient sounds - Ambient being the operative word here, because unlike the dreaded "Ambient" of the early nineties this is actually stuff you want to listen to (well, if you like Fahey you'll probably dig it) that makes your brain utilise bits that usually go to sleep when faced with 40 minutes of guitar instrumental..