31/07/2024
A beautiful D.C Cross - Glookies Guit - album review in the wonderful Italian music magazine Buscadero by a great writer, thank you Luca.
Google translate:
Bill Bryson was forced to fill the pages of an entire book (In A Country Burned By the Sun) to describe the many beauties of Australia, but guitarist D.C. Just a handful of songs like those on his new album Glookies Guit are enough for Cross to convey the idea of the wonder of that part of the world which, according to the writer, is largely empty and far away, so far away. After all, Cross is in those parts he lives there and necessarily knows the subject well, probably better and more thoroughly than Bryson, and furthermore, since he stopped rock'n'roll, he doesn't like to express himself with so many words, but he prefers to observe and line up the notes of an acoustic guitar as if they were the brushstrokes of an impressionist painter, using the same language used by American artists such as John Fahey, Robbie Basho or Jack Rose to talk about himself and what surrounds him. The operation succeeded well in the four solo albums preceding Glookies Guit and he succeeded even better in the latter than the notes
press describe it as "...sadder, stranger, more melodic than his other records, incorporating influences from Germany, South Africa, America and England, but forging a genuine sound
Australian mind...". From where he stands, there is no way Cross can see the outline of the Appalachians, the course of the Mississippi or the panoramas of the so-called Bible Belt (the area of the United States that includes much of the southern area of the country) as was within the possibilities of musicians defined as Primitivists, but it is probable that the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, the desert expanses of the Outback and the waves of any watercourse in the
area have a similar effect on an artist endowed with technique, sensitivity and imagination such as undoubtedly D.C. Cross is. "... I played the guitar a lot and the album came out in a completely natural way declares the author and judging by what we hear in Glookies Guit, it seems that the artist has achieved an extraordinary - nary harmony with an Opus acoustic guitar, an instrument built in Adelaide in southern Australia according to a philosophy that the manufacturer summarizes with "...patience, quality control, a profound respect and understanding for each instrument... ", which could be the same principles with which Cross puts a note after the other
between and which probably regulated the creation of the new album. Although the absence of even a single word makes the interpretation corresponding to the twelve tracks of which the other completely free, the songs of Glookies Guit seem in some way to want to tell stories of blossomed and failed loves, doubling, of rivers, of dancing on the water and of psychotic Euro-
p*e through seven instrumental pieces for acoustic guitar alone and three atmospheric environmental tracks, which shift the axis of the work towards more experimental horizons, as happens in a mesmeric Wattle Battle, in a reverberant Failed Gen X Love Story or in a dreamlike and disturbing EU Psychic Travel Club, where ghostly field recordings also surface. In general, Glookies Guit is mostly an airy and sparkling symphony of acoustic strings which, between fluid tempo changes and infinite chord variations, takes on the vague nuances of a blues in International Bury The Hatchet Day, the playful rhythms dares of bluegrass in Edward River, Denilquin Flow and in the delightful Gen In Black White. Scenic, fascinating and imaginative, Glookies Guit And
The album by "...a guitarist in love with his instrument..." according to the press kit: a passion that shines through in a crystal clear way from every single note that D. C. Cross unfailingly plays with extraordinary mastery.
LUCA SALMINI
