Recorded back in 1998, this offering of über guitarist and sonic explorer Steffen Basho-Junghans might seem like an anomaly compared to his earlier works, Inside and Song of the Earth. But it's not. Landscapes in Exile is a pure sonic exploration of unknown aural landscapes that Basho-Junghans undertook as dictated by the verb "listen." Indeed, he uses no special effects, just basic 12-string, six-string, and slide six-string guitars. The music found in each of these exercises doesn't ring as poetically or aesthetically beautiful as his other recordings. This is primitive music in the sense that Cecil Taylor's music is primitive, or Joe McPhee's, or even John Fahey's more Eastern work. Here Basho-Junghans was listening for the guitar itself to lead him into alternate sound worlds. He abandoned his musical trick-bag, replete with elegant techniques, near-visionary virtuosic fingers, and hammering shape methods, and instead went toward the sounds blind -- only the ears told the fingers what to do. There are brash strummings of chords that don't exist, near-silent pastorals where one string is played over and over (Filling the Skies), and minimal slide pieces where one, two, or three notes are played on a single string with such repetition that the only way their differences can be heard is by noticing the timbral variations as the strings drone and act contrapuntally against one another (Hundred Birds Courting the Phoenix a+b). Also, there is the two-part title track, an extended study of glorious harmonic sonances and timbral interactions. In Pt. 2, it would appear that strings are used as harmonic drones against a percussive figure that calls to mind everything that was played in the first section. The final work, Flowery Moonlight, literally sounds as if it could have been a collaboration of Morton Feldman's ideas about the non-binding relationships between notes and sounds and John Cage's idea that disruption was only the deepening of a particular work. This may not be the most blissfully easy of Basho-Junghans' records to listen to, but it does open a multitude of inner spaces for those willing to take it on. It's a brilliant work that will be looked at for years to come and will no doubt influence many. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi

1		Filling the Skies
2		Hundred Birds Courting the Phoenix A/B
3		Landscapes in Exile 1
4		Landscapes in Exile 2
5		Wild Geese Alightning on the Sandy Shore
6		Flowery Moonlight

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