"Minimalist pop / experimental guitarishness". This is how American composer Jonathan Badger chooses to describe the unique style of music that he writes and records and after one listen to his latest effort, entitled Verse, released by Cuneiform Records, I'd probably be hard pressed to come up with a more accurate and succinct description of the music presented here.
Clocking in at a shade under forty minutes, Badger (guitars, banjo, computer, piano and percussion) has constructed a listening experience that comes across as feeling very cinematic in nature, due in large part to a myriad of various different sonic textures and richly layered tapestries. While song titles and attempting to describe each composition on a singular scale seems pointless, because as the old expression goes, the whole is definitely greater than the sum of its parts, there is a wonderful and congruous feeling of cohesiveness flowing throughout this disc. Each track blends seamlessly into the next as Badger unites minimalist electronic sounds and basic piano work with his layered and somewhat unorthodox sounding guitar playing to come up with an end result that feels like a breath of fresh air. Even when things do veer slightly off course, as they do on a couple of the more orchestral textured tracks "Limbec" and "Sickle's Compass Come", it's not enough to throw the listener completely off course and these two songs serve to compliment, rather than distract from the overall mood of the record.
Track Listing
1) St. Lucy's Day
2) Dotter
3) It Came Down From The Night and Stood On The Porch Until I Invited It In For Tea
4) The Bear
5) Nimbus
6) The Valley Of The Shadow
7) Limbec
8) Bouge
9) Erbarmen
10) Sickle's Compass Come
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