Jim McAuley - Gongfarmer18

[Nate Dorward]

New one on Nine Winds. McAuley's only previous recording that I can turn up is the excellent Acoustic Guitar Trio on Incus, with Nels Cline & Rod Poole, a disc I liked a lot. Not sure why he's recorded so little--he's not young (the photo in the new disc suggests someone in his 50s or 60s) & he's apparently been a fixture on the West Coast scene for a while. The liner notes refer to John Carter as "a mentor, a friend, and a constant source of inspiration in my life." There are a couple tributes to Carter's "enigmatic alter-ego Wally Blanchette"--a pair of monster acoustic blues pieces. The touchstones of this aren't jazz so much as the blues, flamenco, folk; the more improv-y moments can suggest Roger Smith (more than Derek Bailey). Warm, thoughtful, entirely musical--I've been spinning this one a lot.

The title by the way is the word for a medieval sanitation engineer.