Since 2022 guitarists Simon Kempston and Paul Tasker have appeared annually at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for their Songs Without Words residency at Edinburgh’s venerable folk venue The Royal Oak, an oasis of calm amidst the hurly burly of the carnival atmosphere on the nearby Royal Mile. One thing that was missing however was a souvenir for the audience to take home with them, a recording of the pair playing together.
Now, after their third stint at The Fringe, Kempston and Tasker actually have got together in Glasgow’s La Chunky studios to record an album of eight instrumentals which they have called Tangled Strings. They are both superlative guitarists with Kempston described as a master of finger style guitar by The Scotsman, as evidenced over a slew of solo albums, while Tasker has won acclaim both solo and as one half of Doghouse Roses, a duo who have been described as the UK’s version of Gillian Welch & David Rawlings.
The album finds the pair in tandem on all the tunes, playing on nylon and steel strung guitars with Tasker adding some banjo on occasion. Excellently recorded, the strings spark and hum and the gliding fretwork is audible, adding to the sheer vibrancy of the recording. The tunes are separately composed but there’s little to differentiate between who wrote what when listening as the pair blend together while the titles are somewhat “enigmatic,” as on The Winter Chimes of Romainmộtier. There are (very) brief liner notes regarding all of the tunes herein but (unless you want to spend a day on Wikipedia) it’s perhaps best just to wallow in the exquisite sounds these two finger wizards have come up with.
They range from explorations into classical guitar as on Kempston’s So Sad, A Sorrow Not Yet Felt and Tasker’s Firefly, to the Appalachian echoes of Tundra Plane and Sula’s Song, and the intricate weavings of The Winter Chimes of Romainmộtier/Onwards We Travel and The Resolution Torn Asunder. Overall the album is spellbinding. It’s a comfort and a joy, an album which can sit quite comfortably alongside the likes of John Fahey, Leo Kottke, Bert Jansch and John Renbourne.