Late last year I was sitting in an apartment in Berlin. My friend had put on a record picked from our host’s vast collection. A series of spindling guitar tones sprang from the stereo, creating an endlessly rolling, a kind of drone-meets-blues effect. At the end of the first side I discovered that we’d just been listening to John Fahey. Fahey is the kind of musician that you read about in The Wire Magazine and file away for a time when you chance upon an album in a specialist record store and actually take a listen – a kind of ‘canonical realisation moment’.
Queenslander Andrew Tuttle’s debut album as Anonymeye on Scott Sinclair’s Half Theory label is a fascinating first album. Based around a rough concept of a roadside motel – the CD packaging design is based on a roadside diner menu – Anonymeye Motel is a thoughtful exploration of wide open spaces and the open road. Although it opens with the weakest track, Suburban Shopping Centre Carpark which suffers from its dull rhythmic backing and beat production, it soon hits its stride with a series of Fahey-inspired guitar processed pieces that transform into intricate fuzz in the vein of Fennesz. Life In Suburbia revolves around around a ribbon-like guitar loops that unfurls underneath layers of field recordings. Pacific Highway, 3pm is the most Fahey-like piece employing lovely guitar work that becomes heavily processed on its sister track Pacific Highway, 3am. The closer, Reception, is another heavily processed guitar piece which dissolves into drones. On another track Tuttle introduces his own vocals and there is a clear sense that he is experimenting with several genres at once and there is a pop musician lurking somewhere beneath. Although referencing its influences very directly, there is plenty of interest and those who enjoy Greg Davis, Keith Whitman and Fennesz will appreciate the skewed pop take.
