Product Description
There is only a handful of guitar players who have taken the sound of John Fahey, Leo Kottke, and Bert Jansch to another level. Michael Hedges was one. Pierre Bensusan is another. The French guitarist was all the rage in the 1980s with his intricate finger-style picking, lush melodies, and influences that ranged from Ireland to India. Pianist George Winston sang his praises and Michael Hedges named a song after him. The buzz may have waned over the last 20 years, but Bensusan has only grown more impressive as a player. Altiplanos finds the guitarist in rare form with songs that are marvels of internal logic and whimsical digressions. He seems to be carrying on interior conversations, but he does it all with such technical ease and melodic grace that it never sounds contrived, however knotty it becomes. Bensusan is a willful individualist, which accounts for a couple of vocals sung in his slurry French and experiments in textural improvisation like "Sylva" (which sounds like a Grateful Dead space-jam outtake, only very short). But these are anomalies in a mostly solo acoustic guitar CD that may well be Pierre Bensusan's definitive guitar album. --John Diliberto
- Track Listings : Disc 1
- Sentimentales Pyromaniaques
- Dame de Clevedon
- Sur un Fil
- Altiplanos
- Demain, DI'aube
- Scarab
- If Only You Knew
- Hymn 11
- Nefertari
- Sylva
- Nuit des Mores
- Falafel Montsr
- Tacita
- Chant de Nuit
