Just when you thought Phil Keaggy couldn't get any better, here comes "Roundabout," a tasty marriage of guitar mastery and digital wonder from the astonishing virtuoso.
If I understand this correctly, Phil Keaggy recorded his pre-show soundchecks over the years, and as a long-time loop-lover, kept the moments captured for further tweaking and experimenting. Says Keaggy, "I started playing with delay machines and early looping devices in the late 1970's." His thirty year love affair with this looping technology culminates in the aptly named "Roundabout." Quite honestly, on the one hand, I understand very little of this digital process; on the other, I totally dig this quirky, playful, percolating music. Keaggy lays down basic rhythm guitar tracks, capturing them digitally and then adding effects to create his avant-garde one-man electronic concertos. "Roundabout" melds together elements of rock, jazz, funk, and blues, and is at all times completely entrancing, the 18 tracks ranging from one to five minutes in length.
What is amazing to me is the wide range of sounds, genres, and emotive powers in this digital note-bending. Keaggy's songs capture a mood, a moment, perfectly, like a bubble in time. These songs have a transcendent quality. Put it like this: one minute you're in front of your computer listening to "Blue Moon," the next you're watching the morning sun rising from a quiet country road. The jazz changes of next track "Is It Going" feel like the perfect follow-up, and the nimble percussive delight that follows, "Cayenne Loop," pulsates with a distinctly different buzz, but it fits equally well. The upbeat "2nd Avenue" is a bouncy stroll down a city street on a spring day, while "J-Loop" is as introspective and quiet as a journal entry. Imaginative and wild, "Zooloop" is dark and tangled, while the intricate "Loop Frog" beams with light. Keaggy's sonic creations are richly diverse, reflective of both the writer and the Source of his great productivity. Prepare yourself for some delightful musical space-travel this November 7 when "Roundabout" releases.
