Jonny Dillon – Songs For A One​-​String Guitar [All City]

Worldwide FM’s album of the week is Jonny Dillon‘s “Songs For A One​-​String Guitar”, out on All City Records from Dublin.

Songs For A One-String Guitar is the debut instrumental acoustic guitar LP from Jonny Dillon. Better known for his analogue electronic music productions and all-hardware live sets under the ‘Automatic Tasty’ moniker [Lunar Disko, CPU, Wrong Island], Jonny’s records (bearing heavy acid and electro influences), along with live appearances at venues like Berlin’s Panorama Bar and Kiev’s Closer belie the fact that he has been quietly exploring the musical landscape of the guitar for nearly twenty years.

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Recorded as a series of sketches over the last 10 years, Songs For A One-String Guitar represents a snapshot taken over a long exposure; one individual’s private response to a variety of currents and inspirations both musical and emotional. While informed in large measure by the world of Irish traditional music and song (of Sweeney’s Men, Planxty and Seán Garvey) along with that of primitivism and the American Spiritual (of John Fahey, Hank Williams and Mississippi John Hurt) these songs are equally a personal attempt to give expression to an inner landscape, from the experience of sorrow and loss to the promise of redemption and renewal.

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Songs For A One-String Guitar may seem to represent a departure for those who know Dillon for his electronic productions alone, though the reality is that these songs merely represent a new opening onto an old landscape; they are an invitation to more fully share in one individual’s yearning to find meaning through creative expression. “These songs are very personal to me, so there’s a certain nervousness in my seeing them released. I hope that they prove of some use, and that they do some small good to those who hear them.”

Tracklist:

1. Turning Invisible In An Imaginary Rose Garden One Evening 03:46
2. Amhrán An Dreoilín 03:10
3. Jonny Tries To Catch A Pomegranate 04:10
4. The Road To Your Door 02:36
5. Requiem For Joe Dillon / Light A Penny Candle 06:56
6. Somebody Else’s Blues 02:38
7. God Bless Little Peter 03:39
8. That Go To Sleep Rag 02:39
9. Mad Sweeney’s Day Off 02:50
10. Again, But With Feeling This Time 04:17
11. Start Again (Carry On) 02:54