Chuck Johnson
Velvet Arc

THE REVIEW

What could Chuck Johnson and Brian Eno possibly have in common? Maybe nothing, but Brian Eno always comes into play.

For example, yesterday I made a shopping list, and along with paper towels, parchment paper, palm oil-free biscuits, and two lettuces, I also put in 100g of ham and 200g of Brian Eno, because Eno always comes into play.

Now, after this joke that not even the most inspired Bagaglino with Pippo Franco patting the bum of the beauty and everyone chasing each other to finish the gag, I might as well take a moment to focus on Chuck Johnson.

You won’t find much about him in Italy, those pages that hear, listen, and ride the wave don’t review him, and for me, that's a great point of pride.

Chuck Johnson is a guitarist, period. A guitarist of the old American guitar school that the twentieth century blessed, finding in those native modulations a hypnotic, psychedelic, droning charm at times.

Like in Peter Walker or Ry Cooder, from whom Chuck Johnson seems to take inspiration but it’s just a hint and nothing more.

Chuck Johnson makes history on his own, and it’s not a well-known history.

It's the story of an instrumental album that doesn’t feature virtuosity or dizzying ups and downs.

At certain points, you’ll feel a strong urge to chew tobacco and go off in search of your Django; at times, you’ll find yourself in a remote spot in North Dakota looking at those slightly looser American landscapes; and at times, you’ll feel like you’re in the jingle of a reassuring insurance commercial. But between Anamet and Velvet Arc, here appears Brian Eno.

Eno appears at the closing (very ambient) of Anamet and after the insurance guitar of Velvet Arc that at some point mixes and disappears, swallowed by an organ drone and an ethereal violin, ever more blurred.

Stuff from Evening Star, from Alvin Lucier. Important stuff, in short. Well-executed stuff, like the guitar that reemerges from this fluff and goes back to being the traditional guitar and greets you this way. And, in the end, it leaves you a bit like that, between a pentatonic and a melancholic country and old west, with the certainty that Brian Eno always comes into play, because in some of his compositions, I remember that pioneer guitar very well indeed. Well, if my beloved Brian would stop bothering us with generative apps and start producing stuff like this, with artists like this Mr. Chuck Johnson who has sensitivity and skill to spare, you never know, it’s never too late to wink at a masterpiece.