Disquiet

The name Boduf Songs is the moniker of a single guy, Mat Sweet (not to be confused with pure-pop maven Matthew Sweet), who makes space-folk like few others. At least, like few others alive. There is a taste of John Fahey’s Zen minimalism in his simply plucked lines, and of the recently deceased Syd Barrett in his intense insularity. (There’s also an echo of early Paul Simon, but that’s the maudlin, introspective 1960s icon, not the world-pop artist we know today.) Sweet milks light feedback for its electric magic and sings (mumbles, really) with the quotidian dread of high-grade slowcore: he talks as if to draw attention to his meaning, but his voice is so quiet it’s more texture than text. The Kranky label, which he calls home, has posted a 40-minute live set (MP3), recorded at the radio station VPRO in the Netherlands.

By Marc Weidenbaum