Natural Causes

This new acoustic recording from Steve Tibbetts and Marc Anderson is well worth the wait (It's been 8 years since his last solo recording, and I'd begun to worry if he'd grown tired of expressing himself with such instruments and sounds). My wife (who is usually not a huge Tibbetts fan) comments that it is "absolutely beautiful". I think it's great too, but not as immediately captivating (interesting or exciting) as his more electric stuff, but my wife is a lot mellower (subtle and wiser) than I... For me this is more background music, lush washes of guitar (acoustic, but still often delightfully tortured in Tibbetts' distinctive way), and layers of interesting often delicate percussions, but without the fertile and evocative sound-scape images of his previous compositions. The short acoustic motifs are familiar from his previous recordings, here layered into shifting and gently surging and ultimately blending patterns. It is different from anything he's done (at least since 1981, when they collaborated on NORTHERN SONG's sparse, quiet almost somber, acoustic recording), and it's a nice change to have these acoustic riffs just continue and build without the more space-tearing, mind-bending, electric energy his albums are often punctuated with. So, in the end I guess we get an older, wiser and gentler (and quietly joyful) Tibbetts (and Anderson), not concerned with making new music (or tearing the fabric of his older music) as much as seeing what lies hidden in the folds...naturally exploring what lies within.

Steve Tibbetts always manages to re-invent the genre that he essentially invented anyway. For those who know his music, you know what I mean; for those who don't, I wouldn't know where to begin, since his music doesn't sound like anyone else's. Suffice to say that he is always at his creative, inventive, innovative best, and this CD is no exception.

Everything Tibbetts is great, really great music here.

i might be able to say that tibbetts music has been my very favorite. i like most of what he's done, but i love some of his albums - most clearly, northern song and safe journey. natural causes thrills me like they do, in a deep and abiding way. ahhh.

I was recently introduces to Steve Tibbetts and this album has a variety of rhythms and soothing sounds.I play it at end of day to leave work thoughts behind - some of the cuts have a meditative tone

I'm a long time fan of Steve Tibbetts and Marc Anderson and I own all of their albums. This one is relatively calm and sedate. It's not as ethereal as, say Northern Songs, but is very introspective, even a little somber at times. Perhaps, like many of his releases, this will grow on me in time, but I can't help wishing for a little more depth, texture and activity. Still, if you love their music as much as I do, you'll want to own this one too.

Easy Peezy - The product was as advertized and sent in a timely manner. I will buy from them again.

Well, I believe Steve had hurt his hand before making his last record, A Man About a Horse, which still managed to fit into his ouvre quite well, if maybe a bit tentative compared to Safe Journey or Exploded View. I see a number of reviewers listing his music as 'Zen', (and who cares if a burp is a guffaw? if Mahayana differs from Theraveda etc....), I think he's coming more from a direct contemplation of emptiness as something integral to sculpting sound to its highest level of pure being. That rings clarion here with the acoustic instruments-only armory, we get a lot of sweet strokes of the chisel, brush and finger-on-the-ceramics wheel.I don't know, but this recording captures a distillation of what I think he's always aimed for, super-nicely too, if that works grammatically.Highly recommended.The percussion by Marc Anderson is apt and harmonious, even timeless; reminds me of Statius guiding Dante through purgatory.John