A Small, Good Thing - Slim Westerns Vol.I

Andrew Hulme est une personnalité aux multiples facettes : pierre angulaire de plusieurs groupes des années 90 (O yuki Conjugate, 7, The sons of silence, Spoke), il a également travaillé avec deux excellents guitaristes, Tom Fazzini et Mark Sedgwick, au sein du bien nommé A small, good thing, dont Slim Westerns, tout au moins le volume I (1994 - car je n'ai pas écouté la suite qu'ils ont donnée à cette belle échappée planante), est le premier et probablement le meilleur des trois disques jamais sortis. A situer entre un Morricone lysergique, un Calexico ambient, et le Ry cooder de Paris-Texas dans les scènes paysagistes initiales.
C'est dire que les guitares sont ici à l'honneur - câbles électriques tirés le long de routes sans fin -, cordes réverbérées, traitées ou maltraitées (Hole in the Heart), qui tracent les lignes de fuite d'un far-west surréel. Lâchées par amples pincées sous le soleil, ou alors glissant tels des busards slide dans l'air étalé en nappes denses. Des ébauches de mélodies folkisantes basculent parfois, entre chien et loup, dans une atmosphère d'abandon, ponctuée de cloches funèbres (Twice As Evil As You), de percussions sèches et guimbardes aux vibrations âpres (Saguaro). Le sifflement d'un lasso, suivi de raclements, ouvre une scène mystérieuse dans Gulch. Les façades rugueuses des canyons s'adoucissent sous les brumes électroniques et les échos de lointaines chorales. De brefs dialogues, des ferraillements de trains, rappellent les ambiances plus typiques des westerns ; mais les mirages reprennent vite le dessus, détourant des plans qui s'effacent aussitôt entre aperçus. Slim Westerns restitue les aspérités de ces territoires, comme à travers l'oeil d'un condor qui chercherait la portance des grands courants aériens et les frémissements de l'infiniment petit.

Mark Sedgwick (acoustic & electric guitars, glissando, keyboard, percussion, mouth harp, electric slide, bass, simulated gate, reclusion)
Tom Fazzini (guitar, keyboards, tapes, voice, typewriter, acoustic slide, celeste, rubber band machine)
Andrew Hulme (keyboards, percussion, trumpet, whistles, wildlife, dry guitar chops, bogus marimba, edit, FX)

UK group A Small Good Thing is the brainchild of Andrew Hulme, better known as the driving force behind seminal tribal ambience group O Yuki Conjugate, whose Peyote and Undercurrents albums are classics of the genre. Slim Westerns represents a directional, and inspirational change for Hulme, whose customary preoccupation with tribal rhythms is here superceded by a kind of pulp fiction-inspired, and occasionally almost quirky ambient ode to the American "wild west".

Opening to the crisp, clear sounds of a kind-of laid-back, twangy, Ry Cooder-ish steel-stringed guitar piece, overlaid with the thick electro-atmospherics that have long been the hallmark of O Yuki Conjugate recordings, Slim Westerns makes an immediate impression; it is an impression of wide open spaces, shimmering, heat-haze crazed horizons, and - you guessed it - big men in Stetsons and spurs who shoot straight and ride tall in the saddle!
The curious and original thing about this album is its evocation of the "wild west" as a memory of too many rainy Saturday afternoon B-Grade serials at the Bognor Palladium, or any of its incarnations elsewhere in middle Britain. As such Slim Westerns betrays the cold, northerly aspect of its European heritage, and in so doing provides an interesting comment on the near-universal permeation of American cultural iconography in the second half of the Twentieth Century. The album is an eccentric and thoroughly overblown parody of its subject (witnessed by track titles such as: Twice as Evil as You, Hole in the Heart, Gunsmoke and Jane Russell), yet at the same time its half-out-of-tune saloon bar piano feel and dreamy Harold Budd-inspired resonant spaces lend it a listenability born of inspiration rather than derivation.
Somewhere South of Here is the recording's standout piece, locating spoken word samples of delerious religious fervour in a (spiritually?) empty ambient landscape, and throwing in undertones of implicit violence and madness for good measure; it is a piece which veritably glistens in the noonday sun whilst hiding a heart as black as coal - the perfect sonic image of the fatally flawed, simplistic duality which lies at the the centre of the "wild west" myth.