Leo Abrahams - 'Searching 1906' (Just Music) Released 16/03/07

'Searching 1906' soundtracks a documentary of the 1906 San Franciscan earthquake disaster narrated by American author Simon Winchester. It appears as very much a background work, accomplished yet non-competitive, a winter of the mind. With the signature styles of Ry Cooder's slide guitar / movie atmospherics and Marc Ribot with his tres guitar and angularity in evidence, Leo takes styles and influences that have found their way into the U.S. melting pot by way of its early settlers.

Displaying figurative, minimalist guitar work, 'Sundown' comes over as a mellow and plaintive tune with Celtic connections taking the listener on a boating jaunt, and 'Open Road' maintains the Celtic folk lineage with a dainty accordion and a strumming number. 'Writing Time' has a hypnotic looping-structure of simple beauty coaxed from acoustic guitar, and 'Detective' and 'The Death Lady' have the Mexican border in earshot with their Tex-Mex stew -'Detective' a bubbling cauldron of a tune with squeezebox and the tres guitar stalking the streets, and 'The Death Lady' with a melancholic waltz. 'In The Basement' has endless time between the notes weighing like a Grandfather Clock of death, evoking washed out sepia-prints found in the attic of collective memory as the guitar is strung-out.

'Searching 1906' appears much longer than the actual 10:41 minutes of a super-mini-album it is. A textural work that has the imagery of American painter Edward Hopper's vacant landscapes in mind, desolate and with oppressive clouds of melancholia.