Vital Weekly (NL)

Another return to 12K is Gareth Dickson, who back then was a fine surprise for 12K, with his album Quite A Way Away (see Vital Weekly 821). That was in fact his second album, as his first was Collected Recordings which was released by Drifting/Falling in 2009 but which is no longer available. As 12K boss Taylor Deupree liked this album so much he decided to re-issue this on 12K and quite rightly so. In my previous review I made the reference to Nick Drake and I think that is also appropriate here. A man, a guitar, desolation and captured in a beautifully sonic environment. Some of the ambience in which this takes place is very moody and textured, like Brian Eno had something to do with it. Sometimes it seems that Dickson merely strums away, but with a minimal amount of coloring (maybe a bit of reverb, a dash of delay) he creates wonderful music. Music that doesn’t deal with laptops, field recordings, electronics, but just a man with an acoustic guitar. To go into the deep end and do something else: that’s the true strength of 12K. (FdW)