Fortifying the acoustic guitar market, solitary folkies continue their downer parade. One of the more alluring soloists is English bard Mat Sweet, who records as Boduf Songs. On his self-titled debut he shares a similar one-sheet with fellow countryman Duncan Sumpner, aka Songs of Green Pheasant, but where the latter plots a course through shimmering Simon & Garfunkel psychedelia, Boduf Songs wanders into gloomier terrain.
Sweet resides in Southampton and runs the small imprint, Blue Baby Recordings, on which he first issued this LP as a CD-R. As such, he's self-released a number of his own projects, including Map of Hell's doom sludge, the ambient drone of Pistol At Dawn With Afterglow, and Four Man Ghost's fuzzed Mogwai post-rock. Other Sweet offshoots include Randolph Carter (yo, H.P. Lovecraft), Heavy Manufacturing Concern, and History of Electricity. As Boduf Songs, Sweet strums gently, darkening the sound with discreet bits of noise and desolate Current 93-style lyrics-- the opener, "Puke a Pitch Black Rainbow to the Sun", presents a good example of both inclinations (i.e. the death of summer lyrically; backward guitar smashed against dainty arpeggios).
Standing in contrast to the album's Victorian cover art, these nine austere pieces drift by in less than 30 minutes. (Where Sweet does link with the ornamentation is his antiquarian language á la "fallow fields" and "august fortunes"). Like Samara Lubelski, Sweet adds almost imperceptible touches-- more noticeably, there are the piercing feedback peals of what sounds like a bent saw on "Claimant Reclaimed" and bells woven into guitar rattles on "Our Canon of Transportation". Whatever the apparent similitude, piano, cymbals, bowed everything, and sheets of computer peals materialize over time. As with David Thomas Broughton, the slight gradations create a space for hypnosis; but while Sweet and Broughton share the downhearted William Blake thing, there's less rawness and pastoralism, more craven, craggy, and brooding meditation in Boduf Songs' whisper.
His talent as an arranger offers various shades of black. The instrumental "Our Canon of Transposition" finds castanets or censors clanging against an ominous woodblock and reversed sound sheets. At one point, a murkier sound sinks the tone of the piece, introducing a more frantic edge to the construction. "Lost in Forests" pairs chirpy field recordings and Oren Ambarchi-style gleams (kind of like skipping dusty fractals across a brook). "Vapour Steals the Glow" lodges an underwater mallet into a drone scape and then broadcasts it over AM radio. These miscellaneous accents are beyond restrained, existing not so much as separate flourishes, but rather accrued, integrated details.
This know-how is occasionally his undoing: Sweet enlarges his general sound here/there, but the sad sack whisper and brushwood guitar remain the same. The tempo's boosted with the raga instrumental, "Ape Thanks Lamb"-- think Six Organs and the Sun City Girls-- but his preferred pace is encapsulated in the opening sigh and 1-2-3 of "Oh Celebrate Your Vague Words and Coquettish Sovereignty". It's that soporific Iron & Wine hemisphere.
So while the album's a well-composed suite, the Catch-22 remains: Certain pieces suffer from too much uniformity. As mentioned above, the material's a couple of years old. From what I hear, there will be a new collection in the fall, and at that point-- two Boduf albums in hand-- it'll be interesting to assess Sweet's understated poetics, to uncover what connections bridge the final track of this collection and the dawn of his next chapter. For now, search out some opium and a black light and commence nodding.
