On his exquisite third solo album, Nathan Bowles (Steve Gunn, Pelt, Black Twig Pickers) again augments his mesmeric clawhammer banjo pieces with piano, percussion, and vocals. Instead of the programmatic place-based narratives of its predecessor Nansemond (PoB-16), Whole & Cloven offers a stoic meditation on absence, loss, and fragmentation, populating those experiential gaps - the weighty interstices and places in-between - with stillness and wonder. Straddling Appalachian string band music and avant-garde composition but beholden to neither idiom, Nathan proves himself heir to deconstructivist tradition-bearers like Henry Flynt and Jack Rose.
Tracklist
1. Words Spoken Aloud
2. Chiaroscuro
3. Blank Range : Hog Jank II
4. Moonshine is the Sunshine
5. Gadarene Fugue
6. I Miss My Dog
7. Burnt Ends Rag