On this fine debut album, Toby May's elegant 6 and 12 string acoustic guitar playing owes much to the John Fahey and American Primitive School, a style in which Indian ragas merge seamlessly with more traditional folk-based forms.
In the liner notes, Robert MacFarlane speaks of May's music conjuring visions of "open landscapes in the mind's eye".
There is certainly a strong sense of place in tunes that were inspired by the natural geography and "human interventions" in an around the artist's home in Wales which lies on the edge of the site of a Roman fort.
Hay tells of being inspired by sheep farming, fly fishing in rivers, hill walking, running water and the "murmurations" of starlings.
Claerwen was written in honour of a favourite place near his home which he describes as "aggressively peaceful".
This description can also be applied well to the eight pieces on this album since, despite the apparent calm and refinement of the melodies, there are also of traces of sadness and tension.
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More importantly, these tunes have an emotional resonance thanks both to Hay's accomplished technique and the understated, yet perfectly-judged, arrangements for his accompanying musicians: Angela Chan (violin, viola and cello), Rob Bromley (violin) and Peter Scott (double bass).
The slightly faded luminosity which is evoked in the music is expressed well in the words of the haiku by Matsuo Basho printed on the album sleeve: "I like to wash / the dust of this world / In the droplets of dew".
Toby Hay's website
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