Charactersby Anonymous

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June 04, 2004: In 1977 John Abercrombie went into the studio with a set or 8 original compositions and created, all by himself, a recording that stands easily in my book as his very best and "purest" of all of his many recordings. The sound here is pure Abercrombie, as all of the sounds come from John's acoustic and electric guitars as well as his signiture sounding electric mandolin (which I believe for some reason he no longer plays). If you don't pay attention to the music here, it will just flow over you, unobtrousively, and will create a beautiful ambience in whatever room it is playing in. If you pay attention you get lost in a world of multiple guitar overdubs, beautifull (and slightly mournful) ballads, as well as "Evensong", the closing piece which introduces us to a lost misty world of guitar chords which swell into being from Abercrombies volume pedal with acoustic guitar gently playing in the backround, that will surely make time stand still if you let it. I could listen to this tune alone for another 20 minutes. I have been waiting for years for Abercrombie to do this all solo type of recording again since buying the original vinyl version of theis album. But , who knows why, Abercrombie has still not yet given us a follow up. Maybe he believes that he couldn't top this, I don't know. But there's just no way that he himself couldn't be proud of this recording. Anyway, the only thing i've found that has some of the "vibe" of this recording is a duet album Abercrombie made the previous year (1976) with acoustic guitarist/pianist Ralph Towner "Sargasso Sea", which is different, but also quite unique in the large catalog of guitar recordings out there. I have dozens of Abercrombies recordings over the span of 4 decades now and I would still pick this as the one I would have to keep if only I could hold onto just one of them.