Art of the Acoustic Steel String Guitar 6 & 12, by Robbie Basho

Art of the Acoustic Steel String Guitar 6 & 12

by Robbie Basho

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sinner_saint I’ve begun experimenting with acoustic guitar after being influenced by Robbie Basho. I’ve created my own tuning with intervallic scales. Robbie Basho is as precious as the Cyrus Cylinder!

flow.ctrl It takes you into another world.

Dicko Recently discovered Robbie Basho via (Gideon Coe) BBC 6 Music. His music has blown me away. Incredible stuff. Would be great to see more LPs readily available on digital format.

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Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Wide Open: Rarities, Alternates & Oddments (2005-2013), Reflections: Gnome Life Artists & Friends Cover Each Other, Be Earth Now: Joanna Macy & Anita Barrows Recite Selections from Rainer Maria Rilke's 'The Book of Hours', Unlit Trail, Rejoin the World, Myddyng, Everybody's Talkin' (Shadows of their Eyes), Cold Spring, and 17 more. , and , .

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	1.	The Grail and The Lotus 06:36
	2.	Cathedrals Et Fleur de Lis 07:02
	3.	Pasha II 06:34
	4.	A Study for Steel String 03:00
	5.	Ackerman Special 01:16
	6.	Apres Midi American 01:56
	7.	Variations on Grieg 05:03
	8.	Scottish Rites 04:38
	9.	Pavan India 07:12
	10.	Variations on Ezumi 04:04
	11.	Variations on Clair de Lune 03:36

about

Originally released in 1979, "Art of the Acoustic Steel String Guitar 6 & 12" was Robbie Basho's 15th record, and his magnum opus of solo guitar. It is the culmination of his life's effort to usher guitar music into a new artistic paradigm, and to "establish the steel string as a concert instrument indigenous to America."

This album represents Basho’s most technically fine guitar work. In both composition and performance, the album is enormously complex and yet conveys an effortlessness unique to Basho. As he famously espoused, “My philosophy is quite simple: soul first, technique later.” The richness of Basho's soul emanates from this record as distinctly as each note ringing from his steel strings.

Only one song on the record (“Pasha II”) features Basho’s enigmatic voice, but it may be his most extraordinary vocal performance – his voice calling out through a shimmer of strings, singing ancient syllables with timeless emotion. The remaining ten instrumental songs roam through Eastern and Western modalities, dark and light meditations, wild and restrained expression.

With "Art of the Acoustic Steel String Guitar 6 & 12", Basho summons rich allusions, hallucinations and delicately numinous passages. As he said, "It's not about going far out, it's about going far in. It's about a deeper feeling." These are deep waters indeed, as substantial and enriching today as they were 35 years ago.

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released January 1, 2014

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Gnome Life Records California

Gnome Life Records is a vinyl and cassette label based on the unceded ancestral homelands of the Esselen in present day Big Sur, California. Established in 2005, Gnome Life produces a wide variety of musical and poetic releases expressing wild and mystical perspectives. ... more

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