MUSIC FOR THE SHERMAN BOX SERIES AND OTHER WORKS

Gubler's third album is a really a bit of a compilation between his third album proper Sherman Box Series (music created to accompany an exhibition of Chistine Kroll's collages in 2005 in New Jersey) and his other works collected instrumental pieces from across Gubler's career. Again released on the ultra-small specialized label Amish Records, the album is graced with some of Kroll's works, which are also featured on his previous two albums.

While the Sherman Box Series pieces are usually just harp and derivate instruments solo pieces that would fit a lot of new age albums, Gubler's sparse use of minimal electronics, Gubler ghosts the instrumental pieces, dropping tiny music motifs and folk influences between the harp's strings. Although not really as fascinating as its two predecessors, the most surprising thing about this album is how well it runs out of the exhibition visual context in which it was intended to be heard, retaining enough of the listener's attention not to sound trite and stale. In many ways, the UK folk rock of Bert Jansch, Nick Drake and Anthony Phillips is completely absent; and in some tracks, we are closer to dronal free-jazz or improvs, not far away from completely whacked out Hala Strana's most bizarre folk forays.

The other part of the album is two tracks from different eras of Gubler's life, the first of which is the 12-mins+ Book Of Rayguns, originally recorded on a single as far back as 95 and played by friend Tom Keller, an abstract piece toying away with contemporaneous music inspired by composer DJ Mizelle and post rock allures on electric guitar beddings. Cartographies is a revisit from another track composed around the same time (95) but this time influenced by Morton Feldman's music. This free-improv piece is just piano and electronics toyings.

Sherman Box stands a little outside the usual P.G. Six discography, it is not quite as essential to progheads, but certainly doesn't deserve their ignorance either. If the seven exhibition pieces are holding their own together as a unit, the two outside pieces are not exactly fitting into the mould of the album, thus creating a bit of a mish-mash of "anything-goes".