A Year of Swimming

From the off, the latest release from the incredible instrumentalist drops you into his utterly unique African guitar cosmos. For over a decade, Gripper has given the classical guitar a new lease of life, developing extensive vocabulary for expressing predominantly West African kora music. Departing slightly, this album gives that language free rein with interpretations of, variations on, and experimentations with music from Salif Keita, Baaba Maal, Chiwoniso Maraire and Fanta Sacko as well as Gripper's own material.

Putting such music through the solo instrumental lens turns it a notch introspectively further inward, intertwining melodies suspending us in Gripper's transcendent world. Recorded after a year of personal and familial changes and frustrations where the exuberance of cold morning swimming - like music - became a sort of coping ritual, there's a more personal touch here. Gripper is exploring his own voice rather than faithfully transcribing. There are moments of darkness, vexation, and loneliness alongside those of light, contemplation, and sheer beauty.

Effortless and elegant, it's hard to overstate Gripper's musicality as he pushes the sonic potential of the acoustic instrument still further. His playing buzzes (often literally) with life on a razor's edge where improvisation, urgency and passion, meet composition, tradition, technical precision and beauteous sonority.