Bought together by the Tompkins Square label for their “Imaginational Anthems” comps, C Joynes and Nick Jonah Davis have both stood out; not so much for their radical differences, but for their Englishness. “Split Electric” (Thread Recordings) finds them alternating tracks and experimenting with the current fad among their avant-folk ilk; electric guitars. The results are infallibly virtuosic and often compelling, with Joynes (Cambridge, rowdier) just outflanking Davis (Nottingham, crystalline). Notable cover art, too, in that the collage built on a 1981 Kerrang cover is by outsider folk singer, Richard Dawson; another reboot of the vernacular that, like his own music, hovers between rough-hewn wit and self-conscious whimsicality.
On ‘Split Electric’ C Joynes and Nick Jonah Davis, both firmly established as acoustic guitarists, each undertake a series of solitary electric guitar explorations. The result is an album of recordings suffused with amp hum and circuit noise, the hollow chime of microphonic pickups, and the unsteady rumbling of plate reverb.
Recorded in a near-derelict dental surgery in East London and a cellar in Nottingham, partially channelled via a spring reverb unit outside of Cambridge, and then mastered in the Outer Hebrides, ‘Split Electric’ is a wilfully crooked record.
Born of the stylistic contrasts and complements between the two newly electrified players, ‘Split Electric’ blends the brittle ringing tones of electric folk with overdriven garage blues throw-downs and lumbering muddy-booted psychedelia.
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