Charlie Ulyatt
Dead Birds

Neil Young's Dead Man soundtrack is the first that comes to my mind when I read that an album consists solely of an electric guitar. That's when I usually skipped to another album. But the latest release of Nick Jonah Davis and C Joynes "Split Electric" and musicians like William Tyler or Steve Gunn they all helped to qualify my opinion.

Charlie Ulyatt from Nottingham in the UK debuts with an album of mostly undistorted, amplified solo electric guitar pieces similar to Dean McPhee's music. Not as sophisticated as a guitar player but similar in working with the characteristics of guitar amps, sustain and effects.

In his own words:

Dead Birds is, perhaps, the culmination of many years spent living in the wild and sparse flatlands of Lincolnshire. The bleak endless landscapes taking form in the sustained minimal electric guitar of Charlie Ulyatt. Despite this empty landscape, a warmth runs through the shimmering notes, slowly repeating and changing like a haunting yet unsettling nursery rhyme sonically told over wide open spaces.

Although an instrumental guitar album, the title track 'Dead Birds' contains the words of a Greek poet based on the story of Icarus, told as a political allegory through a short distorted ebow blast.

Recorded in an old potato warehouse and mastered in the wilderness of the Outer Hebrides, Dead Birds feels like the start, and not the end, of an interesting journey across personal landscapes

The album is available on Charlie Ulyatt's bandcamp as cassette, cdr or download.