Steve Gunn :: Music For Writers
Photo: Sebastien Moritz
Gunn’s atmospheric approach and overall piercing practice to his craft are universally unparalleled in this day and age. Like an old-timey farmer who tends to his lyrical land season after season, harvest after harvest, if he were to suddenly stop, or be forced to hang up his historical hat, whose fibers and suede structure have been beaten down by the ancient sun, he would cease to exist like some melodic mist swaying in the feverish fields of his ancestor’s anatomy. These days, the melodic magi is based in New York and has cosmically conquered a career rich in captivating charisma, breathtaking bravery, and a universally unique connection to his iconic instrument. Since the release of 2022’s esoteric exercise “Nakama", Gunn has placed himself in the ritualistic rhythms of collaboration alongside pianist, banjo player, and composer David Moore. This time, he returns to the spiritual settings with his first solo instrumental album, “Music For Writers,” and the world couldn’t be more ready for its calming charm and holy harmonies. Carefully conceived in various locations around the world, such as Berlin, Brooklyn, and Latvia, with a stripped-back setup, Gunn leans into the sonic softness of his prehistoric process by capturing the album’s overall story in the simplest way possible. Mastered by Carl Saff and mixed by Ernie Indridat, someone Gunn has worked with quite extensively in the past, the album transports listeners into the holiness of harmony with swift visualization and the motions of seasonal changes within the heart.
Photo: Gabriel Kutz
“These pieces are small environments, places to enter and leave as needed. Some are brief and clear, others stretch out and unfold. They echo a belief that music can create the conditions for attention or non-attention, and that it can open a space.”
While attending the Pedvale Art Residency in Sabile, Latvia, late last year, Gunn began to study the local landscapes and their biblical barriers of ancient anatomy by listening to the worldly whispers that escaped the legendary lips of its ethereal ecosystem. Using the rawness of the rooms he selectively dwelled in, the veteran musician’s meditation with the guitar, synthesizers, and field recordings found throughout the music’s melodic memory helps to restore the lingering loneliness and personal pain we’ve all endured over the last decade, while a liberating light of love casts a harmonious hum from the dysfunctional depths of society before retracting back into the soundless soil from once it came. “Music for Writers” is rooted in a deep need to pause, to reflect. It came from walking without direction, from listening to birds and distant engines, looking at sculpture, watching movement through a window, from writing freely in notebooks and letting sound follow thought, says Gunn, and with this being something he’s wanted to embrace and channel for quite some time, the album’s cherished center articulates those eager elements of intimacy, longing, and the existential emotions of the human spirit flawlessly. With tracks such as “Cat,” “Park Entrance,” “Pedvale Sunrise,” and the album’s opener “Sky (debesis),” “Music for Writers” is a spellbinding effort that channels the sophisticated softness of the night by irresistibly introducing the melodies of the morning in the most cinematic way possible.
