Steve Tibbetts’ guitar speaks in Eastern tongues: the acoustic liquid-raga curls of “Lupra”; the watery electric suggestion of Tibetan monks deep in murmured prayer in “Black Temple”; the icy distortion whipping through “Glass Everywhere.” A Minnesota instrumentalist whose pursuit of the transcendent in feedback and non-Western scales has taken him to Nepal and Indonesia and encompasses ten albums since 1977, Tibbetts also loves to rock: He recorded much of the searing guitar on “A Man About A Horse” in a single night, over frenetic Balinese drum samples colored and doubled by percussionists Marc Anderson and Marcus Wise. And Tibbetts’ white-hot screams and dives in “Chandoha” combine echoes of Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page, wailing as one in the snowy peaks of Kashmir. –Rolling Stone

ECM bio

1. Lupra
2. Red Temple
3. Black Temple
4. Burning Temple
5. Glass Everywhere
6. Lochana
7. Chandoha
8. Koshala

• Downbeat
• Stereophile
• Guitar World and The Sensible Sound
• Drug review
• Lukewarm review
• BBC:  Should-be-more-famous
• Reviewer on mescaline?
• Isthmus:  aqueous
  
• New Note Magazine: acoustic shivers