Here at OBLADADA, a most treasured memory, is seeing John Fahey play at the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh, in 1999. He played for almost 2 hours, offering just 3 extended songs, as unbelievably, the tiny audience slowly evaporated out the door. We, however, were absolutely transfixed. During the concert, a chatty and good-humoured Fahey told a story about a girl that he knew on a reservation. He described the scene where they met and then mid-sentence, perhaps even mid word, started to play Juana from his album Womblife. Playing his guitar in trademark focus, for the next 30 or so minutes, it quickly became apparent the instrument was his voice – the story just continued. The music sounded like the way he spoke, and the way he told stories.
This basic observation hadn’t really occurred before but quickly it made completely sense. Fahey’s music and guitar was a reflection of him. His late 60’s style was just one way he had channelled his ideas – as life, health and his world changed, his voice naturally changed with it.
People, (us included) still obsess with albums like Requia, The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party & Other Excursions and Fare Forward Voyagers. However, after a vague decade or two, Fahey in the late 90’s, was still pushing his guitar forward. That was then, and this was his now, and the way to the next note was always another chance to re-evaluate…
At this time, the somewhat infamous Ephinany of Glenn Jones album and backstory reveals the same rose-tinted mistake. A collaboration with the band Cul de Sac, whom Fahey called a retro lounge act, during its explosive creation. The band had assumed catfish in bloom Fahey but the album’s sessions quickly went off track. Fahey came across like a saboteur across much of those sessions but it is also now clear, rather than just being some impossible dick, he was clearly more interested in exploring bold new ideas. It just so happened these new ideas were a bit more angular and abrasive, and bore few similarities to the work he’d made 3 decades earlier.
City of Refuge and Womblife, also both released at this point, mapped out these spikier and in some ways, more audience alienating tendencies. The elaborate back stories and details had been exorcised. Financial worries, divorces, homelessness and life on the brink, had all understandably taken their toll. He could have played the game on some nostalgic fingerpicking circuit and been loved, but no.
Becoming a gradually more and more watered-down version of his younger self wasn’t ever the plan – and was to be avoided at all costs. This was his steely approach until his tragic premature death in 2001, at the age of just 61.
So, with all these elaborate webs of tangents and cross references as a preface, news of this new album Proofs & Refutations, collecting previously unheard music Fahey made, in the turbulent timeframe of 1996, is huge. The results are staggering.
The whole thing takes approximately 1 second to be amazing.
All the Rains is overwhelming and unique. Fahey’s voice looping all the rains came down before echoing binary variations on that statement. It’s Terry Riley’s time lag accumulator, a Lawrence Weiner meditation on words, somehow narrated by Noah bellowing from the bow of his ark. It’s both unbelievably simple and breathtakingly innovative. This is a significant and unique moment in his music. Even on the first listen, you feel yourself drawn deep into this incredible new world. Eyes closed, trying somehow to communicate across the void to Fahey directly, to convey how spine-tingling it is…
F for Fake is a late phase Fahey sampler in 7 minutes. Sliding notes and spaces, voices rising like Robbie Basho in growling drones, like monks in a Himalayan monastery. The texture hangs on almost a standing wave before opening unexpectedly into a sitar outlined conjuring of paradise.
The two parts of Morning stretch out for almost 9 minutes where the knots and flourishes of his early playing is replaced by spaces and silences that seem to be filled in, by your imagination… The effect laden surge of For LMC 2 is another head swivelling moment, presumably a tribute of sorts to Loren Mazzacane Connor, it rolls around like an even more spaced out Womblife edit. A 4-minute zone that we could be happily submerged in for days…
The two parts of Evening, Not Night is perhaps the nearest he allows himself to his past. A tumbling fingerpicked odyssey that approximately retraces old paths in ways that feel instantaneously both elaborate and minimal.
The album eventually leads to the moody closer Untiltled (w/o rain). Buzzing echo drenched strings, pinging, and bouncing around a menacing throb somewhere off in the distance. Both elements grow and engulf each other, forming into roars and alien transmissions. Somehow it should be unsettling and ugly but the weird sheen covering everything draws you deeply and effortlessly into the very fabric of the music.
Ultimately Proofs & Refutations feels like an invaluable new piece of the overall puzzle. Artists in later phases all have this challenge where they either continue or dare to evolve. It’s harsh but it’s often the case that artists simply run out of steam, and the previous magic is lost to the past.
Whilst he alienated part of his audience, I think it’s not an exaggeration to say Fahey bucked this overall trend, and clearly thanks to people like Jim O’Rourke, encouraged him to do what he wanted to do, and helped facilitate that…
Hearing this new music clearly shines as a light back on a time in Fahey’s career that found him overwhelmed by life. Whilst it’s impossible to separate the music from the man, and in the context of what came next, music of this quality, and absolutely fizzing ambition, seems like more than we could have reasonably hoped for.
He’d probably hate the sentimentality but his loss remains a rare one that’s never not stung.
Proofs & Refutations is however an unexpected and monumental treat. Perhaps the biggest aspect to this new collection, after a period of reflection, is how staggering the opening track All the Rains remains, even after a hundred listens. The album as a whole, fans out as powerfully as everything he released at the time.
Our hero was right to hang onto his continuing thirst to try new things and somehow, we hope he’s laughing at us all, as our jaws drop yet again. John Fahey was always part of the very top tier, somehow, more than 20 years after he left us, that’s even more the case…
Proofs & Refutations is out 8 September on Drag City, on Vinyl and digitally
obladada.com 
3 Comments