Steffen Basho Junghans

On 2004 album 7 Books, Basho-Junghans explored a more aggressive and diffident approach to his steel string acoustic guitar play. This album turns a gentler cheek back to a pastoral mode of 2003’s Rivers and Bridges. The long title track that opens the album wanders and tentatively contemplates trills and echoes before gradually giving over to an ecstasy of vibrating overtones that verges on airborne. Likewise, "Woodland Orchestra” collects a veritable hive of zings and stings. Often compared to John Fahey, this album eschews that master’s blues bending and terse changes for a more straightforward and expletive-free vocabulary. The brightest end of the rainbow and where it lands seems to most preoccupy the musical spectrum here. The ever-forward bouncing chords, played without pause, risks slight muscular strain on necks from head bobbing and ankles from toe tapping, but it’s a risk most will like take without qualm.