UNDERGROUND
BY JOHN MULVEY
Daniel Bachman
★★★★
Almanac Behind
THREE LOBED RECORDINGS. CD/DL/LP
A guitar radical’s document of climate crisis.
If Daniel Bachman has often been bracketed as a guitarist in the tradition of John Fahey, he’s always reached beyond folk, to the degree now that this astonishing album is closer to politically charged conceptual art. He’s still a virtuoso player – check the banjo workout of 540 Supercell. But you can also hear frogs in his Virginia backyard, a sign of an environment thrown radically out of kilter (note Almanac Behind is an anagram of Daniel Bachman). So Almanac Behind becomes a multi-layered threnody for climate crisis, as emergency weather broadcasts and field recordings of wind, rain and fire overwhelm Bachman’s picking and drones. A meticulous and bold piece of sound art, but one which is rooted in a plaintive local, human response to global catastrophe. Amidst the radio static of 3:24 AM KHB36, the tune Bachman is playing on slide is an old Carter Family gospel – When The World’s On Fire.