American primitive

Gwenifer Raymond’s singular fingerstyle playing draws on everything

~ Michael Stevenson ~ Leave a comment

 

Rising Welsh-born, Brighton-based artist’s playing manages to be manages to be both earthy and otherworldly

YOU COULD BE FORGIVEN for thinking that Welsh guitarist Gwenifer Raymond must be a great admirer of the late John Fahey, for she is. Although still unknown to the public at large, Fahey was one of the rare performers to have more or less single-handedly invented an entire genre of music, in his case the tuneful but somewhat abstract form of solo fingerstyle guitar known as American Primitive. Raymond’s own approach fits comfortably under that umbrella, and she has even gone so far as to borrow one of Fahey’s signature songwriting strategies: writing an elegy—or, to use the late American’s term, a “requiem”—for a dead mentor.

But is Raymond merely a Fahey copyist? Not a chance. She was already well on the road to her own style before she’d even heard his name.

“It was sort of a gradual thing, really, because I’d been playing in punk bands for quite a long time, but after a while I started getting curious about investigating different types of music—and specifically things that I’d read were inspirations for the stuff I liked,” she explains in a telephone conversation from her Brighton home. “And a very common thing seemed to be this pre-war blues: guys like Leadbelly, Skip James, Blind Boy Fuller, and Mississippi John Hurt, those sorts of dudes. I kind of wanted to investigate that.

“As a guitarist, from a technical point of view, for a while I was entirely convinced that on, like, John Hurt tracks there was more than one guitar player present,” she continues. “So when I discovered that there wasn’t, I was like ‘Well, I need to know how he’s doing this.’ In my research I discovered that there was this thing called alternating-thumb style, so I went out and bought a bunch of Stefan Grossman tab books, and just started learning it.”

That, in turn, led her to a guitar teacher in the Welsh capital, Cardiff. “He taught all sorts of things, but he also happened to have a sideline: he was a really great alternating-thumb player,” Raymond says. And after a few lessons, she felt comfortable enough to play him some of the music she’d been writing at home. “I was going ‘What do you think of this? I’ve been doing these instrumentals.’ And he went ‘Ah, that sounds like this guy John Fahey.’ He played me some John Fahey tracks, and that’s kind of where everything changed. I realized that it was a thing that people might be interested in.”

It was more of a case of convergent evolution than deliberate emulation, Raymond stresses, and the differences between the two musicians are as marked as the similarities. Fahey’s most beloved requiem was dedicated to one of the younger musician’s early inspirations, Mississippi John Hurt, and Raymond herself wrote a “Requiem for John Fahey” on her debut full-length, You Never Were Much of a Dancer. “Eulogy for Dead French Composer”, from Raymond’s new Strange Lights over Garth Mountain LP, pays homage to proto-minimalist composer Erik Satie, however.

Tellingly, Raymond considers herself a composer who happens to write for guitar. And she rarely improvises, whereas Fahey would happily work 20-minute guitar ragas into his sets, and in later life turned towards free improvisation on electric guitar. Both performers draw on the uncanny, but Fahey tapped into the haunted world of the Southern Gothic, while Raymond’s sources are more specifically British.

Gwenifer
“A lot of my childhood memories are from rolling around in these misty fir forests—the sort of place where you would absolutely shoot The Blood on Satan’s Claw…”

“I love horror,” she says, laughing. “I’m a huge horror-movie nerd. And in particular, I love folk horror, which is obviously a very British genre, really. There’s a lot of influence from that kind of stuff, which I think is one of the great exports of the U.K., and especially Wales and the Celtic countries. There’s this kind of esoteric, supernatural horror, and I guess I just see everything in that context. Especially instrumental music; folk instrumental music, in particular, does a lot to convey the landscape that these things come about in.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Wales,” she continues. “It’s very scenic, but most of the time it’s raining, and it’s dark. So a lot of my childhood memories are from rolling around in these misty fir forests—the sort of place where you would absolutely shoot The Blood on Satan’s Claw, or something like that. It’s kind of all melded in my head.”

Raymond’s preoccupations are revealed in the way that she uses ringing overtones and high harmonics to add a shivery, spectral dimension to her music, which somehow manages to be both earthy and otherworldly. She is also increasingly using modal folk melodies in place of familiar country blues motifs, making her music both more personal and more British. And on Strange Lights over Garth Mountain’s title track, she delves into how unknown worlds have manifested themselves in her own family’s mythology.

“I don’t really think about what songs are about, typically, but that’s such a weird track,” she says. “I was thinking to myself ‘This is really odd. What is this?’ And as I was thinking about that this memory came back to me of when I was quite young, at home one evening, and my mother and my sister had gone to the local shop to get some groceries. When they came back they were full of ‘We’ve seen these strange lights over Garth Mountain. We saw a UFO!’ And that memory stuck with me.

“I didn’t see it myself, but I had a childhood interest in UFO’s, and I ended up becoming an astrophysicist,” Raymond adds, laughing again. “My intellectual opinions about the likelihood of UFOs don’t match my emotional opinions, which I’ve always stood by. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story!”   

Source: Guitarist Gwenifer Raymond’s singular fingerstyle playing draws on everything from pre-war blues to folk horror — Stir

Six Strings of Tension: Gwenifer Raymond

~ Michael Stevenson ~ Leave a comment

By Duncan Park

For this episode we traverse to the British Isles for the first time to speak with shadowy Welsh apparition, and apocalyptically dexterous Welsh Primitive player, Gwenifer Raymond.

A lesson in Welsh musical history is imparted, with tales of Newport once being dubbed the “new Seattle” with flagship venue TJ’s leading the charge (post-interview research reveals this is allegedly where Kurt Cobain proposed to Courtney Love), and the glory of playing in punk bands in The Valleys. We speak about Gwenifer’s musical origins and influences, and how “Hendrix was the only guitar wanker who could get away with it” (what a fucking quote, eh). Also, when it comes to electric guitar, the love of feedback triumphs over the classic solo.

Electric guitars aside, we talk about Welsh landscapes and how the ineffable feeling of visions and nostalgia of where and how you grew up permeates the music you create. In Gwenifer’s instance this would be the woods at the foot of the Garth Mountain – dark forests, cold, misty, and imbued with gothic atmosphere. And as a South African living in the tropical city of Durban where monkeys swing from the trees, I can confirm that the cold, gothic forests and mountains of an Ancient, Arthurian Wales is exactly where Gwenifer’s music somehow transports me to every time I hear it.

In terms of six stringed technicalities, for a third time on the podcast, nickel strings get a shout out (technically nickel alloy if you want the specifics), and the merits of certain recording techniques and the use of digital processing in recording acoustic guitars are discussed (if it sounds good, go for it). Chats about horror movies are where the conversation gets truly interesting, and for real, A24 needs to get Gwenifer to write a soundtrack for a classic British folk horror that they almost certainly have in the pipeline.

Songs about dogs are the only beautiful songs.

Please also note the announcement that the Lovely Eggs are the best band in the UK.

At first, you can hear how nervous I am to speak with such an incredible guitarist whomst I hold in the highest revere, but the nerves quickly settle as soon as we get into the familiar discussion territory of the glory of grunge, and the genius of Joey Santiago. It must be noted that every single song in Gwenifer’s solo repertoire is an attempt to do Vamos by the Pixies.

I hope you enjoy this chat with the wonderfully wild and surprisingly affable Gwenifer Raymond.

Gwenifer Raymond On The Art Of Primitive Guitar

~ Michael Stevenson ~ Leave a comment

To hear Gwenifer Raymond perform is to be swept up into near-orchestral tapestries of noise.

It’s remarkable, then, to step back and fully realise that those cyclones of melody are being generated by one person, and one instrument.

Predominantly a guitarist – although she’s also a noted banjo player – Gwenifer Raymond is a phenomenal instrumentalist, someone who is able to blend different traditions and techniques into a highly personal landscape.

Releasing two albums along the way, Gwenifer Raymond is one of this country’s most-noted guitarists working in a so-called Primitive Style.

Ahead of her set at EFG London Jazz Festival this weekend, the Welsh-born, Brighton-based artist breaks down what Primitive Guitar actually entails – and why it’s moniker belies the open-ended, highly complex artistry underneath.

The first player I ever heard that could be inarguably categorized as ‘Primitive Guitar’ was John Fahey – inarguable because, as a man at a loss for a genre, he came up with the term ‘American Primitive’ to describe his own instrumental fingerstyle compositions. Prior to this he’d been regarded as a ‘jazz guitarist’, but the term ‘primitive’ seemed to apply more accurately given his strong influences from pre-war blues and Appalachian folk music and how that could tie in more generally to the art primitivism movement.

I entered the world of Primitive Guitar on a tangent from youth playing in punk and grunge bands. Alongside this healthy appreciation of a racket I was also brought up with the records of Dylan, Young, The Velvet Underground etc blaring through the house. At some point I discovered that a common influence that threaded through these seemingly disparate musics were the early American blues players. I bought a bunch of cheap compilation CDs, and from about one verse into Mississippi John Hurt’s ‘Let The Mermaids Flirt With Me’ I was a goner.

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Having taken up the acoustic guitar for a few years I became especially obsessed with the alternating thumb technique popular with country blues pickers of the pre-war period. Being very impatient at learning other people’s songs and having a vocal talent in the category of ‘burning sack of caterwauling cats’, I had resigned myself to composing solo fingerstyle blues guitar instrumentals. I didn’t know that was a thing that might interest other people until another Cardiff guitar player played me my first Fahey record. It was at that point I became ‘American Primitive’.

More recently the term ‘American Primitive’ has become increasingly contentious due to the problematic connotations the word ‘Primitive’ may have in the context of predominantly black and/or poor musicians. It seems quite reductive to describe the sophisticated and adept finger-dancing of blues players like Blind Boy Fuller as ‘primitive’. It also limits the scope of the associated guitar soli movement to ‘Americana’, whereas in reality it draws influence from pretty much every nation imaginable (and some unimaginable – just to make matters even more complicated psychedelic also has a strong presence in a lot of Primitive Guitar music). That said, we all need a section on the record shelves, and the differentiation between primitive and folk art often seems mostly driven by whatever’s popular at the time. So I find myself quite happy to ascribe my own through-line from punk-rock to psychedelic-blues-jazz as a Primitive journey of the guitar.

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My first album ‘You Never Were Much Of A Dancer’ is definitely an American Primitive record in that it is very heavily drawn from the traditions of American blues and folk music. However, I think my second (most recent) album, ‘Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain’ is a departure from the strict Americana labelling. I’d been listening to more avant-garde works while I was writing it, which somehow put me in mind of the strange land and folklore of my childhood in the south Wales valleys. Dark forest misted in low sun, breath in the air and wild roots grabbing at my feet. From that pervasive landscape I think I formed something a little more my own; a Welsh Primitive sound.

On that I’m going to leave with a list of four guitarists that influenced me, in the order that I first heard them. Within each of them is a mish-mash of what in my opinion define the four humours of great guitar: Minimalism, racket, dissonance and scandalously catchy hooks.

Joey Santiago

Blind Boy Fuller

John Fahey

Master Wilburm Burchette

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Catch Gwenifer Raymond at Kings Place, London on November 12th as part of EFG London Jazz Festival // full ticket information.

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Gwenifer Raymond

Source: Gwenifer Raymond On The Art Of Primitive Guitar

Gwenifer Raymond on American primitive fingerstyle, spooky tunings and the morbid potential of the acoustic guitar

~ Michael Stevenson ~ Leave a comment

 

The Welsh-born guitarist draws upon classical punk, grunge and folk-horror to write dark, immersive acoustic compositions

Gwenifer Raymond’s rich, powerful solo acoustic instrumental music first took flight with her debut album, You Never Were Much Of A Dancer. A 13-song flurry of acoustic guitar and banjo compositions – very much in the vein of the big hitters of American primitive, John Fahey and Jack Rose – the set was a riveting demonstration of her often-blistering playing.

For Gwenifer’s second release, Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain, she has composed music that feels more personal and confident. Longer pieces unfold in complex forms and worry less about typical structure.

“The first album was the result of spending years playing in [American primitive] style and gathering songs,” she says. “Some of the riffs went back to when I was learning. With the second album, I’d been playing this music for a long time and at lots of shows, so by that point my voice had begun to come out more naturally. Before, I felt like I was trying to do this American primitive music, but with this one I was like, ‘I’m all right with whatever comes out.’”

Solo acoustic music is solitary by nature, but the pandemic put paid to Gwenifer’s plans to record the second album in a studio, forcing her to take a homemade approach. Continue reading →