Irish guitarist Dave Flynn’s Winter Variations just released is a bit of a discovery, an electric guitar solo album of mainly freely improvised music all based, unusually enough, around the single chord of A Major 9. 

Flynn’s style is eclectic drawing on a range of musics including Irish traditional music, and pastoral American jazz influences be they Pat Metheny or Bill Frisell, with hints of African music and the minimalism of Steve Reich sewn in for good measure. So plenty here to get your ears around.

In the liner notes Flynn comments he was inspired by a trip to New York and a visit to the Guggenheim Museum where he came across an exhibition called Zero: Countdown to Tomorrow. “This exhibition focused on the work of the Zero Art Movement, which was founded by Heinz Mack, Otto Piene and others in the 1950s,” Flynn writes. “Reacting against the dominant expressionism of the time, they sought to break free by, according to Piene, finding pure possibilities for a new beginning as at the countdown when rockets take off – zero is the incommensurable zone in which the old state turns into the new.”

Continuing Flynn adds: “It is only after recording this album I realised that the Zero Exhibition subconsciously inspired its creation, because the way I created it is like returning to zero. I sat down with a blank canvas and started painting and sculpting new music with my fingers, my electric guitar and some guitar effects.” Fresh and stimulating as it turned out, there is more information about the album to be found here. Story: Stephen Graham