Ambientrance (US)

12k gathers tracks from a foursome of avant-garde guitarists… E•A•D•G•B•E is one way to spell “eclectic listening”!

Fonica contributes a pair twinkly blurscapes (“4:55” and “3:33” which are 6:44 and 5:51 respectively, btw) where flitting slips of tonality just wistfully chime and glow… rather obtuse yet lovely and warm. Here-then-gone wisps and drones flow (and sometimes don’t) through “Lettera” (9:10); soft unrecognizable-as-guitar essences hover into various registers, as exuded from Keith Fullerton Whitman’s imagination.

Sébastien Roux delivers a trio of faintly grit-speckled waverings; deep slurs slide through my favorite, the fractured-yet-fluid “Toasa”, whose smeary chords shift choppily, sometimes against lightly sizzling particles.

Bright and enigmatic, seven (from eight) of Christopher Willits’ pieces form an interesting set of dancing notelets subtitled “Seven Machines For Summer” beginning with the chipper dreaminess of “The Baroque Machine” which charmingly radiates, disintegrates and pips semi-rhythmically. Other comfortably weird/lovely “machines” include “The Roller Skating In San Francisco Machine”, “The Seaweed Machine” and the “Fall In Love Machine”. A final Willits track closes the CD, “Champagne and Soda” notably differs with its gloomier soundcolors and even-more-diffused rumblings, ear-catchingly abstract nevertheless.

No wanky solos or timeworn chord progressions here… just 14 pieces of eclectronic guitarscenes. A quite-nice collection of radiantly re-structured six-strings! A-