Duke Garwood: The Sand That Falls | CD review

Duke Garwood learned to play in Thai beach bars and seedy London squats, and has played sax for Archie Bronson Outfit and guitar on the Orb's Perpetual Dawn. He certainly gets around. This album, his third, sounds like 1930s Delta blues recorded on a modern building site. Plucking at his guitar when he feels like it, Garwood's songs have a disembodied, fractured feel, like musical snapshots or negatives. His murmurs and moans vaguely recall Jim Morrison or Nick Cave, although only odd lines - "As the sun was rising, I look away" - are actually intelligible. At times, his collage of drums, xylophones and even a bicycle bell are barely categorisable. It's difficult music that rewards perseverance, but at his most baffling it sounds like someone trying every instrument in a music shop while drunk.