TEXAN solo guitar practitioner and melodicist Cameron Knowler – whose lovely, exploratory album with Eli Winter, Anticipation, we fully embraced in early March – has announced he’s to unveil his first solo album on American Dreams in mid-July.
To tempt you further into his world and to pique your curiosity – and if you love the Jack Rose. William Tyler, Imaginational Anthem aesthetic, you really should check out the two-hander with Eli, above, too – he’s dropped a video for the track “Puerto Suelo”, which we’ve got here for you this very morn.
It’s a tune, Cameron says, about falling in love with something bigger than yourself; stylistically, it aims to (and bullseyes) a braiding of the wellspring pastoralism of George Cromarty and a dustier, western noir; which it plays out with a parched and atmospheric mood that you can wend into and curl up inside.
An absolute lover of the nuance of the individual guitar, as you’d expect, Cameron composed and then recorded “Puerto Suelo” with a specific pair of guitars in mind: a 1939 Supertone all-birch parlor guitar and a late ’60s Teisco “tulip” model, each panned 30% on either side. Each guitar mimics the other rather than spiralling out in harmonic empathy. Kitchen utensil and banjo percussion completes the deliciously homespun, cinematic vibe.
Cameron says of the album and its absolute rootedness in the American West: “Despite the fact that the lightheartedness of youth lifts and the problematic components of the West reveal themselves over time, there are still ways of harnessing the space to richly creative ends.”
It’s a new music that presents as old as the hills, rooted and finding new atmospheric horizons.
Cameron Knowler’s Places Of Consequence will be released by American Dreams on July 16th digitally, on limited CD, on trad black and mail-order exclusive yellow vinyl, and bundled with an accompanying children’s book; go browse your preferred options and place your order over at Bandcamp.
Connect with Cameron at his official website and on Instagram.
