photo courtesy of Rock Rose Music

by Eric Harabadian, Contributing Blogger

Album Review of Carl Weingarten: Stop Me Try (Multiphase Records)

Carl Weingarten is a guitarist/composer who works in a lot of different artistic mediums. He is a master on slide guitar and Dobro but also is very facile in terms of programming and sound design. His background as a photographer and filmmaker seems to permeate most of his work in the jazz, blues, and ambient music fields. In particular, this album features five slices of electronica and chill-oriented pieces that are rife with dreamy imagery and surreal landscapes.

image courtesy of Rock Rose Music

This extended five track album features Weingarten playing the lion’s share of guitars, keyboards, and devices. Frequent partner – and an artist in his own right – Michael Manring blends subtle coloration with bold aural brush strokes on fretless bass. The result, to this reviewer’s ears, harkens back to some of the groundbreaking efforts by Ralph Towner, Terje Rypdal, and Eberhard Weber on the European ECM record label.

“A Fistful of Dust” is an example of this otherworldly sound utilizing various clever production ideas and melodic guitar figures. Strings and orchestral filigree mix with dense percussion for a Mediterranean/Near and Middle East cultural mash-up. “Ideas of May” is kind of moody, with a hint of jazzy samba beats. The droning and spacey guitars suggest some of David Gilmour and Robert Fripp’s finest work. “Night Life Again” focuses on the groove and interwoven themes and percolating rhythms. Various converging guitar sounds rally around a modal harmonic approach. “For Rosa” is kind of a modal blues, with an oscillating and bubbly beat. It’s also somewhat celestial and swings, ever so slightly. The title track, “Stop Me Try,” typifies the entire nature of this disc – dreamy, atmospheric and spiritually techno. The music gradually builds as it breathes and gets a funky undertone from Manring. The result sounds like something, not unlike the mid-’70s period for bassist Rosko Gee as a member of Krautrock experimentalists Can.