We heard two gloriously variegated takes on guitar melodicism here at Cafe Oto the other week. Steffen Basho Junghans was almost piratical in his demeanour and the slant of one of his eyebrows, but evoked dust-bowls, jagged and disjointed landscapes with much of his playing. The best element of his set wasn't any of the actual guitar scrapes, strums and scratches that he wove together in each piece, but the almost teasing sense of dynamic to the sequence of the tunes; he began with one of the most challenging for the listener, as if to situate everyone's ears as far as possible from a straightforward point of departure. Every set of open chords was pushed to its limit and scuffed up 'til all of its weaknesses was exposed. The final part of the set began to sound almost lyrical, coming to the language as from a very long way away, and having no truck with naivete despite a very plain melody.
Kim Doo Soo's were extremely rich, finely constructed confections of lyrical schmaltz and restrained but busy folk guitar, taking great care with each melodic shift and each change of counterpoint relationship between the voice and strings. His extremely plain performing style, subsuming no facial histrionics but a very politely mannered and doleful vocal strategy did him huge favours in coming across cohesively.
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