Vital Weekly (NL)

If Peters and Roden sound remotely like 12K, Gareth Dickson doesn’t at all. I never heard of him before, but apparently he has recorded a bunch of things of before and is part of Vashti Bunyan’s touring band, playing Carnegie Hall (which probably is the reason I never heard of him either, painted in my own corner of the world). A man and his guitar, taping his songs on whatever comes to hand, cassette, dictaphone or four track. A man and a guitar who comes close to the world of Nick Drake, both in the way he signs and plays his guitar, perhaps even more spacious than Drake. Maybe it was recorded in a tunnel, as apparently there is no electronics used in making this CD, yet it seems there is a good use of reverb on the voice and the guitar. Dickson is a singer-songwriter and that may come as a surprise for 12K, a big surprise even. I am not the biggest lover of this kind of singer-songwriter material, but I can hear this is all well-made, with great care and style. 12K made a daring move and I wonder what comes next. (FdW)