Jeff Parker - Forfolks (2021 International Anthem/Nonesuch Vinyl LP)

Jeff Parker - Forfolks | Vinyl LP - 2021 International Anthem Recording Company / Nonesuch Records (IARC0052)

• Solo electric guitar album from the Tortoise and Chicago Underground guitarist, eight pieces recorded over two days at his home studio in Altadena, California, blending loop-driven improvisations with interpretations of Thelonious Monk and the Great American Songbook
• Parker's second solo guitar album after Slight Freedom (2016) and the follow-up to his acclaimed Suite for Max Brown, received universal critical acclaim on release
• Produced by Scott McNiece, engineered and mixed by Graeme Gibson, with liner notes by longtime Chicago collaborator Matthew Lux and design by Jeremiah Chiu

Jeff Parker builds these pieces from the ground up, alone. He plays a phrase, loops it, layers another on top, then improvises over the accumulation. The result sounds less like a solo guitar record than like a small ensemble working in real time, the loops providing harmonic and rhythmic foundations while Parker's live playing moves freely over them. "Off Om" opens the album at just eighty seconds, a brief, luminous sketch that establishes the method before "Four Folks" expands it. "Four Folks" is a piece Parker wrote and first recorded in 1995, and its inclusion alongside entirely new material gives the album a sense of a musician looking back across his own catalogue from a different vantage point. "My Ideal", the Richard Whiting standard, is played with a warmth and directness that sits comfortably next to the more abstract pieces surrounding it. Parker's tone throughout is clean and unhurried, closer to Jim Hall or Grant Green than to any post-rock reference point, even though his career with Tortoise and Isotope 217 might suggest otherwise.

Side B opens with "Ugly Beauty", Thelonious Monk's only waltz, played as a solo guitar reading that keeps Monk's angularity while finding new melodic paths through the harmony. "Excess Success" is the album's centrepiece, a loop-driven piece that stretches toward eleven minutes, Parker layering drones and long tones into something that recalls La Monte Young's sustained compositions as much as anything in the jazz guitar tradition. The piece builds slowly and never forces its resolution. "La Jetée", the closer, dates back to 1997 and was originally recorded with Isotope 217 before appearing with Tortoise on their 1998 album TNT. Parker's solo reading strips it to its melodic core. Matthew Lux, a veteran Chicago musician and longtime Parker collaborator, writes in his liner notes that Parker "eschews genre playing and chooses a painterly approach to colouring the music." The album was engineered by Graeme Gibson at Sholo Studio in Altadena (Parker's home) and mixed by Gibson in Cypress Park. Mastered by David Allen. Photography by Lee Anne Schmitt, design by Jeremiah Chiu.