Daniel Bachman – Almanac Behind

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Virginia native Daniel Bachman’s most recent trio of albums have seen him shift from solo acoustic instrumental guitar whiz to something of an installation artist, pairing his fine guitar playing and acoustic drones with radio recordings and collected sounds. If last year’s Axacan was a more focused record than The Morning Star, then Almanac Behind (a pertinent anagram of Daniel’s name) hones his new sound significantly more into a lean and precise tapestry. Clocking in at just over forty minutes, Almanac Behind is a far shorter album than the above two, and this works in its favour, further lending the record that focus and sharpness.

Where Axacan concentrated on the origins of his home state, Almanac goes broader, looking at the planet as a whole and the potentially disastrous results of climate change. Using a swirling blend of radio samples and earth and nature sounds, as well as acoustic instruments, often digitally manipulated, Daniel builds a dense but meticulous structure to illustrate the frustration, vulnerability and unpredictability surrounding his subject matter. The warped guitar sounds beginning Barometric Cascade (Signal Collapse) evoke this uneasiness, while Gust Front (The Waiting) sees sparse clean banjo picking blend with progressive wind sounds to evoke the calm before the storm of 540 Supercell. This one uses an urgent, tightly repeated banjo part along with rain on a roof heavy enough to almost drown out the music before a collage of storm sounds up the track’s drama and presses the album’s overarching point.

Almanac’s Big Ocean 0 (a highlight of Axacan) is Flood Stage, the album’s centrepiece. Here electronically manipulated notes merge with drones and a direct percussive line, creating a humid atmosphere before giving way to a heavy rainstorm recording. Towards the end, creaks, knocks and distant shouts give the track a sense of horror and disaster, providing a fitting core to the album, before it shifts into the aftermath via the sombre drone piece Wildfire (Smoke over Old Rag), which then moves straight into Think Before you Breathe, a seemingly less ambiguous guitar song. However, here, as on the final track Recalibration / Normalization, subtle tweaking to the guitar recording subtly distorts its form and reminds the listener of the album’s context. An added eerie electronic moaning, just behind the guitar, further throws Think Before you Breathe into uneasy territory, while Recalibration / Normalization uses static to muddy the sound. The purest-sounding song of the set is Daybreak (In the Awful Silence), a sparse and lovely banjo dirge whose clean production starkly contrasts the other pieces. It’s a clever move and gives a simple-sounding tune added gravitas when played against the rest of the album.

Although acoustic music has budged over somewhat on these recent albums to make room for Daniel’s sonic experimental commentaries, his playing remains mesmerising, and the overall sound, enhanced by all of the other intricacies happening around the playing, is deeper and richer than ever. That’s not to dodge the overriding point of this remarkable album, which is a concerned, saddened and angry response to environmental changes causing problems across the globe. As beautiful and powerful as an electrical storm, Almanac Behind is an extraordinary achievement by a unique artist. My album of the year.

Pre-Order Almanac Behind via Bandcamp: https://threelobed.bandcamp.com/album/almanac-behind

Daniel has a Bandcamp Livestream – film debut / album release celebration on Bandcamp on 20 November. Details can be found here.