Ivo Brenner

Ivo Brenner has been playing solo nylon-string guitar in rooms above pubs for the better part of a decade, and the thing that makes his records difficult to categorise is also the thing that makes them worth hearing: he does not write songs, he plays for as long as the idea lasts. ‘Rope Light’ is forty unbroken minutes. There is no arrangement, there are no overdubs, and the only structural decision was where the tape ran out. He is a superb technician who is completely uninterested in demonstrating it, which is rarer than it sounds. He opens for louder bands more often than he headlines, and the room always goes quiet, which is the only review that matters.