The Shunned Country

On his fifth full album for ReR, virtuoso bass player, guitarist, producer, studio engineer and composer Bob Drake presents a new collection of 52 very short songs on uncanny themes, illustrated in the exquisite 24pp full-colour booklet with a set of 20 commissioned paintings by Ray O'Bannon. Perhaps the scariest thing is that each of these miniatures is a fully formed, fully orchestrated and complete structure -- no lazy snippets here -- and Bob plays all the parts with his famously Paganini-esque virtuosity in spooky variable-tempo synchrony -- packing more ideas and material into 50 seconds than most could manage on an entire album. There is complexity here, disguised as simplicity; production genius disguised as eccentricity; the pursuit of an aesthetic of exquisite imperfection. These are ears that have heard beyond technical perfection (too easy, once you have the trick) and moved on to something else.