Article and Review from
Guitarist Magazine
A Minnesota Guitar Society Publication


A legendary pioneer of fingerstyle guitar music, Peter Lang followed John Fahey in laying the foundations for a new genre of solo instrumental music, sometimes called American Primitive guitar, a genre inspired by blues guitar music from the 1920s and 1930s.

His first album, The Thing At the Nursery Room Window, was released on Fahey's Takoma label in 1972. In 1974, his compilation album with John Fahey and Leo Kottke topped the Billboard charts, and became the label's best selling album and a cult classic.

Together with label mates Fahey, Kottke, Robbie Basho, and Bola Sete, Lang helped to define acoustic music's new place on the concert stage in the seventies.

His reputation as a composer of exceptional ability and originality was already established with the release of the 1972 and 1974 recordings, and four more albums followed in the 1970s and 1980s.

Lang disappeared from the studio and the stage in the early 1980s, to pursue a career in film and animation.

In 1999 he left his job as an animation and special effects producer to take a two-year sabbatical to pick up where he had left off, to write and record fingerstyle guitar music once again.

Dharma Blues, a collection of eleven new compositions for six and twelve string guitar, was released in June 2001.

Peter Lang
Dharma Blues
(Horus)

Fans of acoustic solo guitar have reason to celebrate. After a long sabbatical from recording and public performance (let's hear it for raising a family!), one of the greatest acoustic guitar players, graces us with new material. Long associated with players like John Fahey and Leo Kottke (wonder if that drove all three nuts?), Peter has a totally unique guitar style and instrumental "voice". One thing that always strikes me is that while his playing is so technically perfect his personal sound is singular as Segovia's was in Classical music. In the liner notes, Peter compares his need to play with dogs need to howl at the full moon. Please pay close attention to "Dogs Howl" (track 9), which clocks in at slightly more than nine minutes of remarkable beauty and self-expression. Peter lives in Minnesota and promises to be active in public performance. Do yourself a favor and see him live, as he is one of the most original (and between songs, funny) performers working.

By John Kulstad
Electric Fetus Records
Minneapolis, MN

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