Even more of a cult figure than his one-time patron John Fahey, Baltimore-born guitarist Robbie Basho’s music is only starting to enjoy anything like the acclaim given to his Takoma label boss. Basho’s music does provide the odd flashback of Fahey’s style, but allowed a fair hearing, it is equally vivid and (often darkly) beautiful in it’s own right.
‘Bonn Ist Supreme’ is a live document of a gig in the German city in 1980, six years before Basho passed away and fifteen years on from his superb debut album, ‘Seal Of the Blue Lotus’. There are superior recorded works, granted, but this is a rare chance to hear Basho live and in reflective mood, looking back over his career to date.
Basho plays six and twelve-string guitar, entirely solo, and although he is broadly a folk musician, his music is broader than that. The biggest influence on Basho was Indian raga, sepecifically Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan, with whom Basho spent time studying under. Across this scuffed, scruffy-sounding live set, it is this passion that is most obvious – intricate drones, overtones, fingers chasing ecstasy through solo guitar on the likes of ‘The Grail And The Lotus’ and the closing ‘California Raga’. Several of the tracks here stretch out to the nine minute mark, discursive and involving but never dull. Occasionally, the spirit moves Basho to sing, an apparantly polarising choice, but there is something affecting about his vocals that add another soulful layer to the intricate, beautiful playing.
As mentioned earlier, there are better exhibitions of his craft on the early records for Takoma – and the quality of the sound recording is not top-drawer – but ‘Bonn Ist Supreme’ is an enjoyable listen and a welcome release. To bring up the Fahey comparison again, both guitarists did remarkably well to make ‘the same’ sound different every time, and carry you with them.
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