ICYMI (Best of 2018): Barry Walker Jr. – Diaspora Urkantinent
We are coming up on year end list time and realized that we didn’t get around to posting about some of the music that will end up on our “best of” lists. The “ICYMI (Best of 2018)” series allows us to give an appreciative nod to some songs and records we loved this year beyond just dropping them into a list.
Not much exists on the Internets about guitarist Barry Walker Jr., but his latest release through Driftless Records, Diaspora Urkantinent, is the stuff of legends, dreams, nightmares, what-have-you.
Billed as “tectonic pedal steel guitar”, this music could guide a space shuttle through heaven and hell and back again and not even bat an eye.
Guitar has really shined this year on record, both within and (in this case) waaaaaaay outside the conventions of modern strummy-strum what-have-you. Of all the releases in 2018, I’d say I’ve spent the most with Diaspora Urkantinent. There is a serenity within that continues to reveal itself with each listen, almost perpetually effervescing into a sun that will never be born nor die.
Do I like this record? Yes. Do I understand all of the geological references? No.
But that guitar…oooo, that guitar. What a beautiful thing to behold.
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Adam Johnson lives in Minneapolis with his wife, cats, and guitars.
