SEA CHANGES & COELACANTHS (A YOUNG PERSON'S GUIDE TO JOHN FA

"Fahey's music had aged well, even as his approach became more aggressive. His predilection for "wrecking" his own comps reared its head again with Womblife, a complex record that marries musique concrete to bottleneck blues. It doesn't always work: one often strains to hear the guitar over the invasive din. It begins well enough, with "Sharks" merging academic technique with red-blooded guitar wrangling in near seamless fashion. "Eels," however, is nearly nothing but booby-traps of noise sprung on the ear; the sounds of Ives' Universe Symphony bouncing around in comic trajectories while Fahey runs his slide up and down the guitar neck in "Coelacanths." "Juana," the record's most enjoyable piece, is also a track Fahey refrained from fucking with, and one is inevitably left wondering what might have been. But Fahey never wanted to just play his guitar like some acquiescing monkey screeching for approval. The Voice of the Turtle, released in 1968, utilized the same techniques as Womblife¯only perhaps to better effect." www.stylusmagazine.com