Jim Knight – ‘A Deck of Days’
‘A Deck of Days’ features big skied guitar tones, hewn from bell-like chime and music box dreaminess. Layers of arpeggiated lines bifurcate through labyrinthine chains of effects, weaving time-slipped counter narratives, shimmering auras and liquid otherworld reflections. All knocked into shape by analogue drum machine rivets that whisper, gasp, boom and crack in sympathetic unison.
A devotee to the art of obscurity, Jim has spent years in the musical shadowlands building idiosyncratic guitar-based worlds under various guises. There’s a bittersweet tenderness to this collection; a softening or ripening compared to the more jagged and abrasive textures Jim tends to favour in his other projects. It hints at a more forgiving worldview, reflected in the title, with its allusion to cartomancy and fate as a way to interpret the unfolding circumstances of our lives, measured in units of time.