Funny thing a guitar innit?.Basically, a lump of wood with a hole and six strings stretched across it and yet over the past 90 years or so it’s been the pivot around which popular music revolves. I could list a couple of thousand people here who have taken said lump of wood and it’s electrically enhanced cousin and harnessed it’s intricacies in a myriad of approaches ranging from scholarly application to blatant disregard into epiphanies of sound that have the power to thrill and horrify successive generations. And it continues to do so, indeed as you are reading this,somewhere across the face of the world, a spotty herbert is making a noise using one of these devices that will likely as not, make you bounce up and down with joy sometime in the future.

Anyway, all this rumination is here because this week’s When Big Joan Sets Up featured five live tracks recorded last December in New York by Daniel Bachman the latest in a line of unassuming six string sorcerers to pick up the same instrument as our fathers and our fathers’ fathers (and our fathers’ fathers’ fathers.Yes alright Reg, don’t labour the point) and wrestle joyful flurries of magic out of it. He spends fucking ages tuning it up though.

When Big Joan Sets Up 7th February – Daniel Bachman live by Phil Cope on Mixcloud

The Courtneys – “Lost Boys” (Download Single) (Burger)
Disrupt – “Break Out” (EP – “Dub Matrix With Stereo Sound”) (Jahtari)
Prurient – “Doors Closed In Secrecy” (7″) (Handmade Birds)
Muffler – “Start Line” (V/A LP – “We Are 18”) (Hospital)
Swan Arcade – “The Battle of Sowerby Bridge” (LP – “Swan Arcade”) (Trailer)
Daniel Bachman – “Intro/Little Lady Blues” (Live Recording from http://www.nyctaper.com)
Daniel Bachman – “Orange County Serenade” (Live Recording from http://www.nyctaper.com)
Daniel Bachman – “And Now I Was Born To Die” (Live Recording from http://www.nyctaper.com)
Daniel Bachman – “Pig Iron” (Live Recording from http://www.nyctaper.com)
Daniel Bachman – “Blenheim/We Would Be Building” (Live Recording from http://www.nyctaper.com)
Strictly Sound Productions feat. Jah Screechy – “Think Me Did Gone” (7″) (Cubiculo)
Mark C – “Mindwarp” (Download single) (Kode 5)