JON COLLIN - High Peak Selections LP

'This beautifully packaged, reassuringly heavy album is a child wise before it’s time; generous and a little bit mysterious. Things kick off in an almost industrial vein with the spooky ‘Prelude to CK Junior Blues’ in which nary a note is plucked. Thin, tinny, feedback drones croak over heavy amp ‘fuh’ and inner-spring ‘clack’. Strings are sliced, with a knife perhaps, or certainly menaced in some way, until the ghost gives up and returns to the ether leaving a warm humid scent like pine forests after rain. ‘Furniture Makers Moan’ collects pockets of headstock ‘ping’ and knuckle reddening ‘clunk’ as hot and cleansing as horseradish sauce and models them into tiny chess pieces ready to be displayed in an antique box. Even the blind idiot gods of the elements doth their cap as it starts to rain outside the instant ‘High Water’ starts, mirroring the downpour caught as a duet with the salty guitar. This time things aren’t quite as abstract and, as a Chinese blues hopes of happier times, there’s digging deep into some dark corners of the soul, the overseer looks on, cane in hand. After so many variations of steel and wood and thumb and finger it’s hard to imagine where else there is to go but ‘For the Road No’s 1 & 2’ adds aggression to the mix with each note violently plucked and spawning a slight shadow in this knotted tone poem. Complex as the creases on a hand, a pleading tone weeps (man I tried to keep weeps outta this…guitar/gently/weeping etc is a blogging no no) like a boy with a skinned knee. It’s relentless, like illness, until what I’m guessing is part 2, kicks in with a hopeful riff of golden buttery sunlight peaking over the trees helping you scramble out of the darkness towards home. Phew…this is emotional stuff, not afraid to be beautiful and not bullied by trends. Essential to my 16 year old self and any other blues scholars out there…oh yeah.' (Joe Murray)