By Robin Murray
Welsh-born guitarist Gwenifer Raymond has laid out plans for new album ‘Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark’.
An inventive solo musician, Gwenifer Raymond grapples with the primitive guitar lineage established by John Fahey, while locating her own striking multi-faceted instrumental voice. Two excellent studio albums on Tompkins Square have established her reputation, and a new LP will land later this year.
Out on September 5th via We Are Busy Bodies, ‘Last Night I Heard the Dog Star Bark’ was constructed at her home studio, informed by the need to decompress after a frenetic period of touring, and her enduring interest in both science fiction and the esoteric.
“A bunch of the stuff I was reading had these themes about the nature of infinity, and tying this into concepts about the afterlife,” she says. “Those thoughts were running in my mind a lot, especially when I was creating some of the droney sounds that book-end the album. The album enters from the cosmic void and exits through the galactic plane. Maybe you’re exiting out of hyperdrive into some strange planet where the album lives, then you zip out to find whatever is next.”
The album is available to pre-order, and it’s led by ‘Jack Parsons Blues’ – intricate and striking, the slight flamenco flair lends itself to Gwenifer’s driving intensity.
The song is named in honour of a 1940s Californian rocket scientist who helped found NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory – curiously, also a friend of L Ron Hubbard and acolyte of Aleister Crowley.
“I’ve long been obsessed with Jack Parsons,” Raymond says, recalling reading Fortean Times articles about him as a teenager. “He lived in this vast old mansion which he shared with a whole cast of oddballs and shysters. He also came to an abrupt end, blowing himself up in his home lab. For all his faults, I find him to be a sort of romantic character – full of boundless zeal and ideas. He was both a scientist and an embracer of the weird and esoteric. He’s oddly inspirational.”