WIRE REVIEW

PITCHFORK REVIEW

Versatility is prized among instrumentalists. From Nashville country sessions to New York improvisational explorations, the player who can play it all is the player who will likely have gigs. For instance, while cellist Erik Friedlander has played with John Zorn's Masada Chamber Ensemble and with reed adventurer Ned Rothenberg, he's also worked with Korn, Kelly Clarkson, and the Mountain Goats. While Colin Stetson's star is rising with his new solo opus,New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges, he's long kept busy with bands from Bon Iver and the National to Angélique Kidjo and Arcade Fire. This is true for guitar soloists, too, but in this realm, the mastery of multiple forms seems to have less to do with a paycheck and more to do with proving you're more than some new-school John Fahey acolyte. From Sir Richard Bishop's pan-everything albums to William Tyler's expansive Behold the Spirit, some of the best guitar music being made right now is that which takes the world in and sounds it back out through a pair of busy hands.

Thankfully, no one bothered to tell young Irish guitarist Cian Nugent about that approach: His first widely available album, Doubles, comprises two side-length tracks that take definitive and defined approaches the distance. There's no emphasis on how much he can do or how much he has studied his forebears; instead, he smartly focuses on developing a pair of immersive environments that are continuously compelling for more than 20 minutes at a time. He nails it. The first side, "Peaks & Troughs", is an ambitious solo workout for guitar and, eventually, synthesizer. As its name suggests, the tune rises to loud, heavy strums and falls to near-silent picking. A more accurate title might have been "Knots & Threads", as Nugent's emphasis seems to be on the horizontal orientation of his music-- that is, the volume matters less than the way he arranges and links his phrases. At points, his hands are busy wrangling great messes of notes that eventually thin out into beautiful and relatively simple statements of melody. Sometimes, though, Nugent is content to examine one note or chord until it resolves into silence, as if he's staring at a huge, tangled ball of yarn but concentrating only on a small, isolated knot somewhere near the middle. That movement creates an inescapable momentum, meaning that, when this track starts, Nugent's deliberately dynamic approach makes it hard to ignore.

That same kinetic energy applies to the grand and arching "Sixes & Sevens", a piece that Nugent developed with a large ensemble of friends playing drums, strings, horns, and keys. A piece of quiet triumph, "Sixes & Sevens" builds around the obvious, continuous guitar line that runs throughout its 24 minutes. Nugent tucks the revelation that he's been listening to music beyond past masters of instrumental guitar into those near-orchestral flourishes. He hints at a free-jazz maelstrom one moment, eerie organ drone music the next; much later, there's a touch of shoegaze rock thanks to some long-tone distortion and a bit of Japanese minimalism via the restraint of the percussion. The perfectly ebullient passages are a mix of Stravinsky, hard bop, and unrepentant pop; given its redemptive sound, it's where the listener finally understands that versatility is something the young Nugent values, too.

If Doubles has a fault, it's that Nugent makes no attempt to hide his influences or to do something they haven't previously done. This is, after all, a form that has often been beleaguered by its own reverence and subservience to idols; its recent renaissance, however, suggests the time for showing you can do what someone else once did has begun to recede. Fahey, Rose, Jones, Blackshaw-- all of the top-shelf names in this realm have gone for extended ruminations in the vein of "Peaks & Troughs". And Jim O'Rourke stands as the acknowledged master of epics such as "Sixes & Sevens", which rise steadily and delicately to glorious but restrained crescendos. Nugent doesn't reinvent either idea on Doubles, but he doesn't have to; he's inarguably mastered them and made them his own, and that's enough for a start.

— Grayson Currin, July 12, 2011

SIXES & SEVENS (EXCERPT II)

INTERVIEW WITH THUMPED

I did this interview with Ian Maleney a few weeks back for Thumped -- 


Cian Nugent is a twenty-two year old musician from Dublin who is launching his debut album,Doubles, in the Button Factory on Thursday, with support from Wooden Wand and Peter Delaney. The album is a sprawling and ambitious set of two side-long songs; one a dark and sinewy solo piece, the other a grand statement filled with brass, strings, woodwinds and drums. Drawing on the finger-style tradition of Jack Rose and John Fahey, as well as the orchestrations of Burt Bacharach or Ryan Francesconi, Doubles adds a very personal tone the sounds created by Nugent's forebears, representing the emergence of a real musical talent and a strong artistic voice.

Click on the picture for the innerview

LINIMAL MIMINAL

Review by Matt Poacher for The Liminal --


My only previous brush with Cian Nugent was his bright ‘When the Snow Melts and Floats Downstream’ from the third in the Imaginational Anthems series from Tompkins Square. That hadn’t really prepared me for the scope and ambition of Doubles, a 45-minute, two-song epic taking in post-Takoma explorations, dissonant drones and ecstatic, full band excursions into O’Rourke-inspired bliss. Nugent has said that the album is in some way a challenge to himself, and that ‘writing and constructing these long pieces was an attempt to exercise some control over my wavering patience’ – a very timely passion given the prevalence of franticity and ‘continual partial attention’. But what he’s constructed with these meandering, yet never sprawling narrative pieces is never mere virtuosity or showiness: there is coherence, power and emotional depths within these sinewy lines and forms. ‘Sixes and Sevens’ is probably the standout of the two tracks, moving from an almost Bacharach-like bounce to something more sombre and bleak at the midpoint (reminiscent of Gravenhurst in places, James Blackshaw in others) before wheezing to a close with a warm echo of the opening figures. It suggests so many potential avenues you can’t help but be excited for what Nugent might produce next. 

MY WAR BOOGIE / SIXES & SEVENS

Album launch was great -- here's two videos

ALBUM LAUNCH

The "Doubles" album launch is on tomorrow in The Button Factory, Dublin.
I'm gonna have some full band boogie action at it with --
David Lacey/drums; Ailbhe Nic Oireactaigh/viola; Fergus Cullen/bass clarinet; Ivan Pawle/Organ & Keefe Murphy/bass.

Will be a thumper.

Also on the hott bill are super kids -
Wooden Wand
& Peter Delaney (who has kindly stepped in for Seth Horatio Buncombe who can't make it)

Doors 7.30 / 10 euro admission