A Possible Dawn

This disc of mostly solo electric guitar recordings by Loren Mazzacane Connors (there is one trio with Thurston Moore and Jean-Marc Montera to close the album) is not anathema to his acoustic guitar improvisations and his long, unhurried tonal studies. Quite the contrary: On an electric guitar, Connors can take the extreme the other way, elongating every note, nuancing every lonely tone for maximum timbral effect. The title, A Possible Dawn, is reflective of the fact that this music comes from the still darkness. In Connors' tone and sonic worlds, stillness and darkness are far from static things; they reflect and carry a movement inside them that can only be expressed intuitively rather than intellectually. They also carry within them images of sadness, and most of this music, like all his music, is colored in the hues of grief and sadness. It' s simple, really: Connors' music, from his most abstract improvisations to his renderings of folk songs, has always been deeply influenced by and embedded in the blues tradition. The songs here, and in the purest sense they are songs, are blues songs. This is a new kind of blues, open-ended and stridently intoned against the silence while at the same time coming out of it. A track like "Hawk," with its deceptively simple ostinato figure that moves along a line that is continually descending in circles like the bird coming in for the kill or the rumbling storm clouds of "Against Myself, Against the Sky" take the blues drone and pit it against the elements of nature and of the human fault line of endurance, of what is emotionally bearable. That line is nearly crossed on "Wall of Eyes," with its paranoia, comin'-to-git-me roll and slide along the lower register. But then comes the title track, one minute and ten seconds of shimmering hope as the line around the night sky begins to turn gray. These notes are stuttering, vulnerable, and tender. The last track is a half-hour trio between all three men, and it' s a free-form scrim and scrape, shimmer and whisper, scream and wail exercise in restraint, deep listening, and exquisite improvisation. This is one of Connors' finer records, and certainly worth owning.