Alessandro ‘Asso’ Stefana

Now here’s an intriguing album. Alessandro ‘Asso’ Stefana is an impressive experimental guitarist and multi-instrumentalist from Italy who has built up an enviable following – he has collaborated with the great American jazz guitarist Bill Frisell and the executive producer on this set is PJ Harvey, a major fan of his “mysterious and beautiful music.” Stefana’s compositions are heavily influenced by American folk and blues, as well as psychedelia and ambient styles, and the majority of these solo tracks are elaborately multi-tracked instrumental pieces built around a tranquil, gently hypnotic bluesy theme, with a wash of effects provided by anything from pedal or lap steel guitars to organ and Marxophone zither. ‘Out of the Blue’, ‘The Wandering Minstrel’ and ‘The House’ would make glorious, gently epic film music, and could bring him a new and deserved cult following, while the 13-minute finale ‘Continental Spazio’ is mostly slow and drifting and would be ideal for a meditation session. Three tracks feature the voice of Roscoe Holcomb, the Appalachian singer who died in 1981 and who Bob Dylan famously described as having “a certain untamed sense of control.” Holcomb’s original a capella recordings of these songs, released on Smithsonian Folkways, are edgy and compelling, but here they are tamed by Stefana’s pleasantly classy wash of guitar effects.