THAYER, LLOYD - Twenty20

"It has been a couple of years (that felt like a lifetime) since we released lloyd Thayer's last album, Duets (FTR 406LP, 2020), which he recorded with the drummer Jerome Deupree. The intervening time has been weird as hell, but Thayer (master of every string that's ever been strung) has made the decision to create a fantastic, sprawling solo suite for himself. And now it is time to share the beauty with you. Unlike the music on Duets, the piece here was played entirely on double-necked Weissenborn guitar, although the sounds are altered and layered in ways that are a far cry from the delicate slide work for which the Weissenborn is best known. And if there's not a temple bowl in the mix somewhere, I'll eat a bottleneck! Still, many of the same tactics employed on Duets, like mixing Eastern sonances with blues-based art music, are on full display on Twenty20. The extended piece is broken into distinct segments, with different moods, tones, and styles of attack, but the transitions tend