Pitchfork

Faint at the Loudest Hour collects six pieces for acoustic guitar recorded by Idaho musician Alexander Turnquist in a small studio in rural North Carolina in late autumn 2006. Don't let the signifiers fool you: Though based on beautiful acoustic guitar music, very little about Faint at the Loudest Hour is pure, conservative, or provincial. Instead, by embedding both new age and noise-oriented electronic themes into his pastoral pieces, Turnquist unites disparate traditions and ideals, essentially employing sonic counterweights to construct 57 minutes that are as surprisingly dynamic as they are perfectly beautiful.

The cover of Faint at the Loudest Hour is a detail from a shot included in Turnquist's photography series, Broken Reflections. Using a jagged handheld mirror, Turnquist simultaneously captures the scene in front of the lens and something just behind it. In this shot, a visage of knotty, bare branches and blue sky is interrupted by a mirror reflecting more of the same-branches, a sky that's several shades darker, and white splotches (snow?) that disrupt the disruptive image. As the process-based cover and the paradoxical title suggest, Faint explores and interconnects disparate motifs and methods, essentially taking one "picture" and making it more provocative through juxtaposition and mixing. The dominant guitar style here, for instance, employees long, uninterrupted billows of notes in conflicting high and low registers, much like James Blackshaw's The Cloud of Unknowing. But Turnquist occasionally plays in a more percussive style suggestive of Leo Kottke, Michael Hedges, or the contemporary Kaki King. At its best, the guitar work meets those methods in the middle, when Turnquist is executing beyond a singular stylistic comfort.

Similarly, Turnquist undermines some of the disc's most pristine acoustic moments with drones and howls and floods of electronic sound. Assisted by producer and tape wizard Scott Solter, these non-traditional textures are the real counter-reflective glory on Faint at the Loudest Hour. Opener "Amongst a Swarm of Hummingbirds" unfurls a dexterous 12-string guitar stream, Turnquist shaping minor-chord explorations into an arching anthem. Suddenly, the theme is gone, sucked into a blissful vortex of coruscated tape swells, the resplendence tempered with noisy clicks and muted roars beneath. When the guitar re-emerges, it aggresses, less patient and romantic with the pattern now. By track's end, both a bowed lap steel and a trance-like beat have clawed at the acoustic theme.

Aside from the sheer beauty and power of Turnquist's compositions, his biggest accomplishment may be the use of one conflicting form to accent previously overlooked aspects of another. The three-minute wash of tidal electronics that opens "Water Spots Upon My Mind", for example, professes the talents of Turnquist and producer Solter. More importantly, though, it reveals the slow waves of melody written into Turnquist's long-form songs by massaging the attack of the guitar's notes into smooth hills and valleys. That is, by stripping all of the notes away, Turnquist let's us see the forest without having to identify the trees. For such an accomplished player, the move is almost altruistic. Likewise, an electronic haze dotted by vibraphone and taps against the hollow body of a guitar opens "In the Vein of Bedlam". The eerie improvisation hovers, torpid, setting the mood for the brusque picking that overtakes it. Turnquist sounds indignant and troubled, but the key of his anger matches that of the piece's intro. The first four minutes, then, were the sound of his ire taking shape. Because of that prelude, what would have sounded only like an intricate, ominous moment of 12-string guitar sounds more like a story. Connecting is easier.

Inevitably, Turnquist's multi-instrumental ambition sometimes gets the best of him. He emphasizes themes to the point of redundancy or didactism at points, like the return to electronics on the otherwise brilliant "Water Spots Upon My Mind". But, much like Mike Tamburo's 2006 The Ghosts of Marumbey and Fennesz's 2001 Endless Summer, Faint at the Loudest Hour proclaims that the intersection of guitar heroics and electronics craftsmanship is vital.