David Daniell

A special evening awaits us on the first Sunday of March at Santandreadegliamplificatori. After a long tour across Italy, the guitarist from the never-forgotten San Agustin lands in Bologna for the final Italian date. David Daniell is here to present his work for treated, liquid guitar, which suits perfectly the intimate atmosphere of the small basement venue where we take our seats.

The set opens with a drone that hisses confidently between the walls of the location; his guitar, motionless at first, sets off on a journey we conjure up alongside him with our eyes closed, alternating long, menacing noise with carefully controlled, only slightly frayed psychedelic surges; we had actually expected him to venture further off the well-worn paths of the Atlanta, Georgia musician, but we have to admit the blend still works. We recognize an arpeggiated "Sunfish," taken from his previous work "Coastal," and at times it almost sounds like John Fahey arguing with the volume knobs of a faulty, overly loud amplifier. But the act is skillfully balanced between more droning pieces and hazy, elliptical jams drawn from his latest self-released works on Antiopic, titled "Los Jacintos" and "The Hideout."

Let's not forget that Daniell has collaborated and played with musicians of the caliber of Loren Mazzacane Connors, and was part of the open orchestra of Rhys Chatam, not to mention the prestigious partnerships with David Maranja and Douglas McCombs — in short, the best of the world's guitar-avantgarde scene.

The coordinates of this placid evening's concert lie in the reassuring shores of the aleatory, electric spirits of the likes of Quicksilver Messenger Service and the best, if by now inevitably distant in time, Neil Young, as if the latter, gripped by an autistic, stunning effect brought on by a bad acid trip, were to lose himself, solitary, amid the weave of a sound that gradually turns ever more space-rock, yet, as though restrained in his movements, were to remain motionless before sonorities he had created almost unwittingly. It's no coincidence that we happily listen to a few of the master's own tracks before and after the show.

There's a strong sense of sensory and temporal displacement felt throughout the set of this lanky, reserved figure, who seems to have stepped out of some remote wooden house in the Appalachian Mountains, and appears to be listening only to the voice of his own soul, utterly indifferent to what's happening around him.

Daniell seems to challenge the wind and the perfect storm with his instruments, as though caging within his sound all his personal anxieties and fears. And the result is honest and unassuming, without much frills, typically American, pragmatic, going straight into our welcoming minds, which gladly accept this small challenge and hope to drift gently into this sea of mellow torpor that catches us nonetheless prepared, ready to confidently face a journey to an unknown destination. We set off, but we don't know where we'll land. With a smile on our lips and the urge to lose ourselves...

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