Dennis Bolten is another of those “talented multi-instrumentalists” who take it upon themselves to self-release their music and relinquish it to an unsuspecting public. Typically, their actions are catastrophic to the ears, the aural equivalent of Pandora opening up that damned Box and unleashing all manner of musical woe.
Thankfully, on this occasion, ‘Silk’s Groove’ is a fragment of the Hope left inside.
This album is not going to change your life, rock your world nor indeed stop you in your tracks. It will, if you allow it to, slowly burrow its way into your consciousness and reinvigorate your appreciation of the kind of acoustic roots music that the likes of Ry Cooder, Bill Frizzel and others have crafted over the years.
Bald with a closely cropped grey goatee, Dennis could be mistaken for an unassuming middle-aged art teacher. Don’t be fooled though, he has a sharp and focussed look in his eye that matches the playing and song-writing on the fifteen self-composed tracks that make up ‘Silk’s Groove’. He rotates ukulele, banjo, six and twelve string guitars and slide guitar across the tracks: each instrument takes solo centre stage without any other accompaniment.
This pared down arrangement gives the music room to breathe and the lack of any embellishment serves it well. You’ll find no padding, unwelcome intrusions or histrionic fret-work on this album. Simplicity is everything.
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Dennis writes within a number of mediums: Jazz, Blue-grass, Blues, Folk, Country are all given a run out but they are brought to heel by a cinematic sensibility that runs through the music. These tracks are not displaced ambient phrases; rather they are colourful story-boards and vignettes, each with their own tale to tell.
It is this pictorial quality that raises ‘Silk’s Groove’ above the normal acoustica and gives it an edge. You could envisage Dennis’ compositions being used on soundtracks but you’re better served imagining your own reels. I think Dennis understands this effect and consciously chooses a ‘less is more’ dictum; he wisely provides no sleeve-notes to the album nor does he wax lyrical on his own web-site about his style and compositions. The music alone is a sufficient footprint with which to sketch the overall body of work.
If I have to choose highlights: ‘Thigh High’ and its evocation of the 1920’s Jazz Age; the toe-tapping banjo fluctuations of ‘Rattlebones’; the French New Wave cinematic air of ‘Rain On Her Shoes’.
A compelling understatement.
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