Songlines

By Paul Bowler for Songlines

Szymanski’s pensive classical expressive guitar lines are offset by Perman’s electronics trickery.

The music created by childhood friends Morgan Szymanski and Tommy Perman serves as a reflection of their natural surroundings. While their debut, Music for the Moon and the Trees, was rooted in the sounds enveloping the Scottish woodland house in which it was recorded, this latest effort takes inspiration from Szymanski’s ranch in the mist forests of Valle de Bravo, Mexico. Capturing a series of field recordings of local wildlife and habitat – much of it endangered by the current over-development of the forests –Szymanski’s pensive classical expressive guitar lines are offset by Perman’s electronics trickery. Some of its outward-looking folk music straddles a similar melding of the form with jazz expressionism as John Martyn, notably on the echoplex-style guitar lines of ‘Esperanza’. Other tracks see the guitars offset with offbeat percussion (‘La Rosa de los Cuatro Vientos’) or electronic beats and ambient effects (‘Birds of Paradise’ and ‘Harmonic Rain’). Final track ‘Canción del Adiós’ adds upbeat vocals for a hopeful denouement.