This is the least modern sounding new release of the year. Rick Tomlinson's Voice of the Seven Woods creates druggy, foreign sounding psychedelica that sounds like it was performed 30 years ago in some unknown, possibly mythical, land. The ten pieces exemplify all that is good about the guitar and all that is holy about music.
What impresses me most about Voice of the Seven Woods is the reverence for the guitar as a musical instrument. There is little messing about with feedback, unnatural effects or even amplification; instead the guitar is played masterfully. Tomlinson's fingers must be under an unreal amount of control, the licks and melodies he pulls from his instruments are incredibly detailed but sound completely effortless. While Voice of the Seven Woods would have been almost run of the mill in the late '60s and early '70s, today there are so few guitarists who push the melodic capabilities of their instrument in any meaningful way that an album like this sounds almost alien.
Only "Second Transition" lets the album down in any way; its over reliance on guitar effects sometimes smothers Tomlinson's playing and this number is of a slightly lower quality compared to that of the other pieces. However, this is just one small fly in an exquisite ointment. Every other second of music on this self-titled disc sounds sublime, mixing the kind of exotica that the Sun City Girls would murder for with a western sheen, most excitingly realised with the funk/folk trip of "The Fire in My Head." Later on with "Return From Byzantium," Tomlinson summons up the ghosts of Can's most blissed out moments to produce one of the album's most exhilarating segments.
Previous experiences of Voice of the Seven Woods in both recorded and live capacities have been patchy at best but with this release I am well and truly converted. My jaw hit the floor from the get go and only when the drool was forming an unsightly pool could I manage to close my mouth again. Granted that there is absolutely nothing here that is new or forward-thinking but thinking like that misses the point of this music entirely, it is a refinement both musically and emotionally of a fine art.
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