Ben Reynolds, “How Day Earnt Its Night,” How Day Earnt Its Night (Tompkins Square, June 9, 2009)
Tompkins Square seems to be doing everything right these days. With their release of Richard Skelton’s majestic, life-changing, harrowing A Box of Birch under his moniker A Broken Consort, the label proved once and for all that such beauty could find a commercial outlet. With their roster of superb guitarists, including James Blackshaw, Robbie Basho, Richard Crandell, Brad Barr and their Imaginational Anthem Vols.1-3 anthologies, Tompkins Square brings us great new music with every release.
And now we get Ben Reynolds’s How Day Earnt Its Night, a tour-de-force of invention and spirit. The English guitarist is a member of the Glasgow-based Trembling Bells, but here he stands alone. Solo guitar work is naked and austere and demands skill, patience and vision. Reynolds delivers all three. This title track, complete here in its 12:55 majesty, shows a formidable concentration at work. It is divided into three parts: I, Dawn Hurt; II, Non and the Nails in the Coffin; and III, Dusk and Darkness (Revolution). The cascading lines weave emotive peaks, with flavors from the east (near and far), the west (near and far), and while it is fair and possible to make comparisons to the spectacular guitarists above, and to progenitor John Fahey, Reynolds has a unique voice. And it sings, from mystical Eastern flavors to the blues and beyond. Here we crave and need all things guitar (not to the exclusion of others of course) and Reynolds delivers a deeply moving eight compositions. Reynolds is another who, with six strings, moves the world.
