Gordon Giltrap

It is quite amazing what can be achieved by a man with a guitar and the soul of a painter.

Gordon Giltrap has been around since the late sixties and his ability at playing the guitar has never been questioned but his heyday may have passed and he is now able to enjoy creating beautiful music, redolent of the British folk world, without the pressures of the commercial world and the result is this – I honestly cannot imagine anyone else more capable of describing the simple pleasures of a ‘Lazy Sunday’ without a single word or physical image.

On track after track of this CD you listen to his playing and then you look at the title and somehow the sound and the title are a perfect match. ‘Simply Margaret’ is a case in point as the music puts in the mind a lady of a certain age, pottering about the house and bathed in natural sunlight, the simply picked guitar and the gentle flute and the easy strings all plucking from the listener’s mind the image that is so clearly described in the title. Two minutes and 27 seconds capturing a classic image. ‘Joy Ride’ sets me in mind of careening down a Somerset lane on a bicycle, ‘Passing of A Queen’ has sombre tones and draws out the emotions felt over the loss of a matriarch.
All of these images spring from the mind of the listener and one of the greatest strengths of a writer/player like Giltrap is that he simply gives you a canvass to display your own visions and pictures.

Every number here is a small joy of its own world and every one can exist in splendid isolation from the others but when they are put together like this the result is a magical ride through the mind.

He may have been around for what seems like forever but this suggests he is absolutely at the top of his game – wonderful stuff.