Three years ago, guitarist Tom Carter (Charalambides, Sarin Smoke, etc.) checked into a German doctor’s office with what seemed like a bad flu. It turned out to be pneumonia so severe that he ended up in a coma. This double LP of solo electric guitar instrumentals resonates with that experience and its life-changing effects. Psychedelic musicians have long celebrated their psychoactive substances of choice; Carter includes a slow-paced, rue-tinged ode to a beta blocker. Clean-toned rhythm figures pulse like a deep subconscious state, and the leads rise up through them with the enforced patience of an ascending diving bell. When Carter finally busts out the fuzz-tones that emerge on side three’s “Prussian Book Of The Dead,” you hear the exultation of someone who isn’t just cutting loose for the sake of it, but has good reason to savor the fact that he’s still alive.
—Bill Meyer
