New in Aquarius...Scott Tuma

The first time we heard Scott Tuma play guitar, was with skeletal slowcore country legends Souled American. His washed out dreamlike atmospheric guitar parts helped define their sound, but more importantly, introduced Tuma as a truly idiosyncratic guitar player, with a haunting and mysteriously unique sound. Tuma's music was like an acoustic version of Tim Hecker or Fennesz, but whereas those guys use electronics and computers and effects to transform their guitars into blurred dronescapes, Tuma's approach is much more organic, unfurling skeletal guitar lines, a slowed down Appalachia deftly woven into a sprawl of slow motion, washed out, sepia toned countrified ambience. Tuma's two proper solo records, Hard Again and The River 1 2 3 4, are both HUGE all time aQ favorites, so we were pretty excited to hear about a brand new release, especially since we've been waiting patiently for almost 5 years!Not For Nobody begins quite strangely, a super spare, lo-fi recording of barely there guitar, stretched out beneath reverb drenched childlike vocals, cooing and purring, a bit like a countrified Bjork, the sibilance stretched out into glistening shimmers, the melody, mournful and dreamy, bits of tinkling chimes, and muted ambient clatter, the whole thing sun dappled and soft focus, so strange and haunting, but so lovely and sublime.The next track finds us on much more familiar ground, a loose tangle of steel string guitar, sounding like it could have come off one of the later Souled American records, but sans vocals, the melodies lyrical and lilting, couched in a thick layered backdrop of warm whir, sprinkled with tinkling bells and chimes, laced with bits of piano, somehow sparse and skeletal, but impossibly lush. Which is sort of Tuma's specialty, turning minimalism into maximalism, but without losing any of the former's hushed urgency or whispered intimacy.The whole record is quite varied, but each track manages to sound like it couldn't be anywhere else, every one seamlessly leading into the next, a song suite, an album of cohesive musical pieces, not just a collection of songs. The third track, "Eloper", introduces what sounds like horns, for a haunting funereal march, a woozy fanfare that seems to slowly spread out, a simple pulse like rhythm beneath hazy streaks and deliberate minor key strum. The next track begins as a jaunty upper register steel string lullaby, giving way, part way through, to a languorous late afternoon sun dappled sprawl, slightly atonal, gorgeous and bleary eared. "New Joy" buries the guitar in a haze of whirring buzz and warm swirls of lush chords and muted feedback, very liturgical sounding, a dark ambient drift through some ancient crumbling cathedral, while "Rakes" begins as a simple stripped down halfspeed Appalachian hoedown, before transforming into a sea of sawing strings, of layered buzz and extended steel string drones.The record finishes the way it began, with that ghostly childlike voice, the bits of spare guitar, the massive clouds of delay and reverb, that voice a wraith hovering above the web of subtle minor key guitar, the floorboards creaking, motes of dust tinkling like chimes in a soft evening breeze, creepy, sorrowful, and so completely gorgeous.Tuma conjures a timeless magical mystery with his guitar. He plays the mysterious traveler, a wandering audio alchemist, turning notes and chords into gold, or rather, golden streaks of dusty memory and soft golden glimpses of some hidden and blurred otherworld. His are sounds to get lost in, to wrap around yourself like some cloak spun from gold thread, to hide under with a flashlight like a child, creating worlds of light and shadow, a sound at once mystical and enigmatic, warm and familiar, and truly truly sublime.ATTENTION!! The first 100 copies come packaged in a gold on black, cardstock gatefold sleeve, housed in a special oversized handscreened 7" style outersleeve, black ink on metallic gold paper, each one hand numbered. We managed to get nearly 3/4 of that first 100, but the way things have been going these will probably not last long, so once we run out, you'll get the normal, slightly cheaper version (the innersleeve white on brown instead of gold and black, and without the oversized hand numbered outer sleeve).