We at Nugent HQ are pleased to announce this new slammer is ready for your purchasing in CD, gatefold LP and digital download formats. Spend your money.
Two early reviews --
Okay I’ll admit it; this wasn’t what I was expecting from Cian Nugent’s debut album ‘proper’. I’ve heard his music before, and while he can clearly play guitar better than most pretenders to the Takoma throne, I’m getting somewhat bored with the seemingly endless stream of Fahey-esque guitarists out there. Well thank goodness that ‘Doubles’ is so much more than that as Nugent uses the Fahey/Rose axis as merely a jumping off point, and like James Blackshaw has managed to come up with something gorgeous out of the ashes. The first piece begins simply enough, but as it progresses we’re greeted by the buzzing of analogue synthesizers which build into a queasy drone. The flip is where it’s at for me though; and here Nugent is joined by a percussionist and a few other players who flesh out his writing into epic proportions, reminding me of Jim O’Rourke at his best. Seriously good stuff, don’t sleep on this one!-- Boomcat
We first heard from Cian Nugent on the Robbie Basho tribute We Are All One In The Sun, but hadn't heard much since, which makes sense seeing that as far as we can tell, this is the first readily available full length from this Irish guitarist. Who, as you might imagine, just from having taken part in that Basho tribute, whether you actually heard it or not, is another purveyor of modern Appalachia, carrying on the tradition of Fahey, Basho and Kottke, a la James Blackshaw, Ilyas Ahmed, Jack Rose, Glenn Jones, Marisa Anderson, and the 20 minute opening track here positions Nugent well within that pantheon, with his own take on the sound, dark, and tense, clear and crystalline, with lots of droning notes, subtle overtones, less melodic than many of his contemporaries and more textural, although as the track progresses, Nugent's fingerpicking becomes more elaborate, and a more traditional Appalachia surfaces within his dark droney tones, his sound dynamic and varied, lots of ebb and flow, and then close to the end, the sound seems to expand a hundredfold, with an out of nowhere swarm of layered drones, which add a whole other dimension to the piece.
The second track starts out similarly, albeit a bit more traditionally, until the band kicks in, yep, the band, a full band, drums, strings, horns, with Nugent taking on organ duty as well, the sound blossoming into something more than old timey Appalachia worship, the sound spare and sparse, again very dynamic, until about three minutes in, when the song seems to coalesce into a sort of Appalachia flecked chamber pop, but only for a few minutes, the song, also quite epic at 24+ minutes takes lots of twists and turns, slipping back into something more skeletal and darkly brooding, then dark and cacophonous, droney and softly psychedelic, then hushed and barely there, before a bit more chamber pop, with a slow build to something intense and slightly cacophonous, and then finally, a slow, lush, horn flecked steel string final movement. So lovely, fans of modern guitar music and classic "American primitive" (especially both) would do well to check this out. -- Aquarius Records
