Toby Hay – Home Recordings – Volume I
Independent – 2 April 2021
Toby’s recent Morning / Evening Raga album of live improvised tunes all recorded in and around his home town of Rhayader in Wales was a welcome tonic in turbulent times and this concise and sweet little gem is something of a continuation of that theme. Like Raga, Home Recordings showcases a very different sound to earlier euphoric and robust twelve-string guitar compositions like Starlings or Curlew and instead incorporates more space through less notes and patient picking. Yet Seemed it Winter Still uses a sweet refrain on high strings with a subtle background drone to create innocence and a hint of melancholy until electronics shift it into something darker and more mysterious. Songs like Overture and The Last Full Moon, on the other hand, are beautiful in their simplicity and suggest confidence through restraint.
The Loneliest Monk uses nylon string guitar and double tracks it with understated electric guitar to create a song redolent of music from Nick Jonah Davis’ Placebound Spirits EP. Thunderstorm at Ynyslas goes into slightly weirder and more abstract territory and uses fragments of guitar parts multi-tracked to create music bringing to mind Sarah Louise‘s playing, while Sing to Me is as sweet as it sounds and very much akin to The Last Full Moon. Closer Breathe begins in a similar vein to Thunderstorm at Ynyslas, before eschewing the busier sound and settling into a calmly picked six-string guitar part. It finishes a half-hour of music that carefully fits a lot in without once becoming overbearing. Subtle electronic touches, like the slight reverb that enhances Follow / Dogwood Red or the effects behind Yet Seemed it Winter Still, shift this one away from the live improvised nature of Raga, but this is still instrumental guitar music at its purest and there is much beauty in its simplicity and control.
Order via Bandcamp: https://tobyhay.bandcamp.com/