Roger SmithGreen WoodReview

Despite his long tenure with John Steven's Spontaneous Music Ensemble, one of free improvisation's most important groups, guitarist Roger Smith remains a shadowy figure, under-recorded and rarely seen live. Working as a guitar tutor by day and sleeping in the evening, Smith improvises by night at home in North London's Wood Green, where these twelve improvisations were recorded in his kitchen (with occasional contributions from the central heating system).

Smith's choice of nylon strung classical guitar marks him out from his steel string totin' contemporaries John Russell and Derek Bailey. Though there are abstract episodes of string abuse (at one point during "Diminuendo & Crescendo in Green" he sounds as though he might be unwrapping a very sticky toffee that's dropped inside his guitar), for the most part Smith's tone is lustrous, lyrical yet unsentimental as he conjures up dense, knotty arpeggios, resonant harmonics and plangent chords.

Listening to Green Wood is almost like eavesdropping; the intimate documentary recording style admits all the gestural, human noises (breath, guitar rubbing gently against shirt) that classical studio recordings conspire to remove.

Similarly, the longer improvisations are revealing; Smith hovers over an idea, works on it, listens, moves on. Sometimes he seems to reach an impasse, till he lays back or abruptly switches direction. He's always present in the moment and unlike Bailey or Russell, his longer pieces seem imbued with a strong sense of narrative.

The shorter, more abstract pieces (Local Twang, Arse Myth, Strange Interlude) are rigorous explorations of extended technique. In contrast, the gorgeous "Waltz with Heating" is a performance of simple, restrained beauty built around bell like harmonicsand rippling chords.

Derek Bailey once said that maybe the only true free improvisation is solo improvisation. Green Wood is not necessarily proof of that, but Roger Smith's lucid, honest music couldn't have been arrived at any other way. Recommended.