For his second Pentatone release Lost & Found, Sean Shibe trades in his acoustic guitar for an electric model, supplanted by an array of sophisticated pedals. Although Shibe mixes and matches a wide array of composers, the recital’s overall trajectory evokes the kind of moody, slow moving soundscape one associates with “ambient” music practitioners like Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, and Harold Budd.
Play Hildegard von Bingen’s O choruscans lux stellarum and Olivier Leith’s “Pushing my thumb through a plate” back to back, for example, and you’d be hard pressed to determine who’s who, or, for that matter, which composer was born in 1098 and which was born in 1990! At the same time, the long sustained dissonant chords in Julius Eastman’s Buddah and the gentle, prickly melodic flourishes in Messiaen’s O sacrum convivium add welcome stylistic variety.
The three Moondog selections prove my long-held point that if you play any of his catchy and disarming pieces on electric guitar, they wind up sounding like late 1960s/early 1970s psychedelia; think of Jefferson Airplane/Hot Tuna guitarist Jorma Kaukonen noodling around, and you’ll get what I mean.
-- ClassicsToday.com (Jed Distler)
The electric guitar meets the avant-garde in the recordings of Sean Shibe, who has to do less arranging than one might think. Here, he concedes that "[t]he composers and pieces on this album might not immediately stand out as having very much in common; this album is less portraiture than a journey that revels in eclecticism." It is true; with materials from Hildegard of Bingen to the young composer Shiva Feshareki, Shibe might seem to be taking on an unruly collection of pieces, but they share a certain mood and, above all, a certain spirituality that makes the program click. Sample the pieces by Moondog, to whom Shibe has already devoted an entire album. They bounce nicely off the works from the mainstream 20th century avant-garde and also the jazz pieces by Chick Corea. Shibe also does well to include pieces by new discoveries, not only Feshareki but also Oliver Leith, represented by Pushing my thumb through a plate (the longest work on the album) and the tragic avant-gardist Julius Eastman, who is thankfully being rescued from obscurity. If one wants to start exploring the work of Shibe, an undoubted original, there is no better place than here.
-- Allmusic.com
