Gareth Dickson: Collected Works

The ingredients for these collected works are simple. Take an acoustic guitar, add reverb and delay, put them in the hands of a Glaswegian who toured with Vashti Bunyan, Juana Molina, and Isobel Campbell, and start collecting. I usually find it somewhat difficult to get into ambient music, but Gareth manages to split the difference between Brian Eno and Robbie Basho, between the studio drone manipulator and the ramshackle folk guitarist. All the pastoral plains of hum are balanced out by the precise plucking of poignant melodies, making it solid background music apt for setting moods and capturing the attention from time to time. You can either buy this or play Nick Drake’s Pink Moon at half-speed.