Jeff Gburek — Red Rose For The Sinking Ship

Guitarist Jeff Gburek says the title Red Rose For The Sinking Ship takes arcane essence. It's a sonic essay about Mao Zedong's leadership of the Chinese revolution.

Instrumental as it is, these are things that has to be told to you because strictly from the sounds presented here, partly from guitars as well as various electro-acoustic constructions. Cryptic, both in title and sound. Even with an explanation that says: "Red is a kind of a sympathetic individual who loves people. in his own boat he sees the sinking ship. isolated and lonely, he thinks—even on a sinking ship—he may find what he needs. the sinking ship will leave behind survivors, more appreciative of simple human care." Words that should add a spectral meaning to the equally spectral music. The cdr is packaged with a sheet with pictures as further suggestions.

The first movement, for instance, has us floating around in a guitarwanderings, quitely. Ticks and hisses are spatiously ordered but turn out to be a quiet before the storm. The second movement (or 'Threshold') is a lot less comfortable, as a fierce noise comes piercing through. In the following threshold guitarstrings, a musical box and bubbling ticks takes into more open skies until ghostly voices in what seems a restaurant take us back into more inhabited spaces, even to what could be a fieldrecordings from a trainstation. A mellow radiostatic follows in Threshold 4, calmly but steadily creating an atmosphere where subtle ambient chords mysteriously hover over the fluctuating static until less friendly feedback (or bowed metal) concludes the fourth part on a less comfortable note. A delicate musical box returns to search for what could be a (national?) anthem in the final threshold.

The five parts of Red Rose For A Sinking Ship are varied and adventurous. Even though Gburek has layed out his view on what these sounds convey it's still very much up to the listener to create his own story and picture. Luckily, the sounds are pretty and interesting enough to make that an easy task.