MoonJune 2015
Six-string savant searches the darkest reaches of personal universe for a gilded splinter.
Proof Of Light
There’s a great misconception about this British guitarist: everybody talks about his unique approach and amazing technique, thus painting Mark WIngfield as a musicians’ musician, while almost ignoring the pleasure his sonic creations bring… But then, maybe it’s a conspiracy aimed at keeping him a secret for the chosen ones. The plot is to be blown to shining bits with “Proof Of Light” – both the album and its title track which closes it and finds the artist amidst the liquid licks he bounces off Yaron Stavi’s bass and Asaf Sirkis’ drums to catch the refracted ripple and the taut twang before tossing the tune into unknown one more time. That’s the method of it all, melding jazzy unexpectedness to a rare melodious predictability.
The pattern is enchantingly wondrous in the mesmeric low tones of “Koromo’s Tale,” whereas opener “Mars Saffron” offers an insistent delight by spinning mellifluous, if sometimes ragged, lines around rather rough sound of the rhythm section, and “Restless Mountain” slices up what initially is a well-poised sustain. Talk about cliffhangers here, although the genuine groove exchange takes place – slowly but sweetly – in “A Conversation We Had” over a nostalgic, echoey swing with a hint at march in its spring of a step. Later on, ”Voltaic” fashions a funky riff and topples it into a freeform aural ravine as Wingfield’s guitar wears a strange, non-stringed guise, momentarily switching to a freight train mode. Still, the threat is gone once “Summer Night’s Story” unfurls its soothing cloth for the percussion to weave a cymbal-crashed yarn and the bass to puncture it.
Cue the transparency as a proof of light, and a brightness of the true master.
****4/5
