"… pensive, peaceful and pristine." – a closer listen
"His new full length album ... is an absolute gem … It has been an exquisite musical journey." – Stationary Travels
Western Skies Motel is the solo project of Danish guitarist René Gonzàlez Schelbeck. Exploring the intimate nature of the classical guitar, the thirteen pieces on Prism unfold around a theme of balancing light and darkness, uncovering an undercurrent of reflections on solitude in the creative process. Relying on a variety of open tunings, mantric repetitions and droning strings, Western Skies Motel seeks to create a timeless space where the guitar becomes the lens in which the nuances reveal themselves.
The album also sees Western Skies Motel experimenting with the 3rd bridge technique, pioneered by such experimentalists as Fred Frith and Keith Rowe, to create porous harp like timbres that weave through the album, offering a lightness and transparency to the restricted sonic palette of the collection. Drawing on inspiration from Glassian minimalism through simplistic flamenco to the pattern-based musical tradition of West Africa, Prism lands somewhere between contemporary classical and modern folk.
 |  |