#bathetic

On his other LPs and in concert, Dorji often develops a piece at length, either moving from idea to idea or using loop-based layering to build up the music. But while there’s plenty of action packed into each track on Appa, the events tend to elaborate upon or contract in ways that feel fractal rather than linear or vertical. That quality, and the fact that he sticks to an acoustic guitar with occasionally prepared strings, makes this record feel more akin to Welsh harpist Rhodri Davies’ An Air than any guitar record I’ve heard. This music isn’t so much trying to go somewhere as it is asserting a force field within which its own laws hold sway.

The chief mandate, it seems, is concision. This isn’t a complete departure from Dorji’s practice elsewhere. Listen to his self-titled release on Hermit Hut, which was culled from several different cassettes, and you will not find any flailing around. But there’s an elegance to these statements that seems positively editorial. Another priority is that the music must be vivid. Each cluster or sequence flairs like a sparkler being lit, as bright and bold as it is brief. Vivid, of course, does not necessarily mean loud. Gravity is one law that can’t be bucked, and each plucked note of this music holds close to a particular tonal center or melodic kernel. It seems to will its energy inwards, perhaps loath to disturb those who are sleeping and growing in the next room.