{"id":148804,"date":"2025-09-25T10:21:36","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T17:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/?p=148804"},"modified":"2025-09-26T07:47:51","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T14:47:51","slug":"review-buck-currans-far-driven-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/review-buck-currans-far-driven-sun\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Buck Curran\u2019s\u00a0\u2018Far Driven Sun\u2019\u00a0Reunites a Beloved Sobell Guitar with a Master of Acoustic Atmosphere"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>After many years apart, Buck Curran and his <a href=\"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/great-acoustics-buck-currans-long-lost-2009-sobell-model-1\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Stefan Sobell Model 1 \u201cButterfly\u201d<\/a> are reunited on&nbsp;<em><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/4gMYvS0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Far Driven Sun<\/a><\/em> (ESP-Disk&#8217;, Obsolete Recordings, Echodelick Records), and they\u2019ve never sounded better together. Originally built for Martin Simpson\u2014who used it to record&nbsp;<em><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3IzUZ0u\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">When I Was on Horseback<\/a><\/em>&nbsp;(1991)\u2014the guitar has a beautifully balanced tone, a delicately resonant sustain, and a quiet, intimate clarity, all essential to Curran\u2019s explorations in DADGAD and CGCGCD tunings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Buck-Curran-Far-Driven-Sun-Echodelick-Records-and-Obsolete-Recordings.jpg?resize=1024%2C1024&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Buck Curran, Far Driven Sun, Echodelick Records and Obsolete Recordings\" class=\"wp-image-148805\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Buck-Curran-Far-Driven-Sun-Echodelick-Records-and-Obsolete-Recordings.jpg?resize=1024%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Buck-Curran-Far-Driven-Sun-Echodelick-Records-and-Obsolete-Recordings.jpg?resize=500%2C500&amp;ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Buck-Curran-Far-Driven-Sun-Echodelick-Records-and-Obsolete-Recordings.jpg?resize=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1 150w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Buck-Curran-Far-Driven-Sun-Echodelick-Records-and-Obsolete-Recordings.jpg?resize=768%2C768&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Buck-Curran-Far-Driven-Sun-Echodelick-Records-and-Obsolete-Recordings.jpg?resize=300%2C300&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Buck-Curran-Far-Driven-Sun-Echodelick-Records-and-Obsolete-Recordings.jpg?w=1200&amp;ssl=1 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Buck Curran, <em>Far Driven Sun<\/em> (ESP-Disk&#8217;, Obsolete Recordings, Echodelick Records); Photo by David James Logan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The album sits in direct descent from the neo-trad playing of Davey Graham and Bert Jansch, but with a twist shaped by Curran\u2019s years in the ethereally psychedelic folk duo Arborea, when he last owned this guitar. The 90-second title track opens with a gentle, rolling arpeggio on the Butterfly, repeating until joined by a second guitar that moves against the rhythm, sliding into an eerily sustained counterpoint before both fade into silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On \u201cYou Are My Sun,\u201d a similar arpeggio sets the mood for what could be a trad ballad before shifting with the low, rising hum of EBow on a second guitar, and the brass slide of a third climbing the neck. Over the next four minutes, the three guitars trade places in the foreground and background, Curran drawing out tones and colors, half-steps and whole steps, all from the Butterfly. With two minutes to go, a fourth guitar enters with a new descant, its hammer-ons resolving the piece\u2019s ethereal tension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-embed-handler wp-block-embed-embed-handler wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"&#039;You Are My Sun&#039; (Live) - Buck Curran\" width=\"1290\" height=\"726\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/szQKm8QiVyw?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The Aegean \u201cILiad\u201d and its closing reprise, \u201cILiad (Slight Return),\u201d bring the record\u2019s only taste of drums and tambourine\u2014two short interludes highlighting the interplay of arpeggio, EBow, slide, note clusters, and strummed six-note chords. The clusters recall John Renbourn, the chords Robbie Basho, but the sum is pure Curran: music that ebbs and flows in small, deliberate gestures, creating its quiet drama in pairs of notes over shifting, shimmering layers of multitracked acoustic guitar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I couldn\u2019t hum the melodies, but I could sing the arpeggios\u2014the way the guitars step from one to another, one rising while another falls back, only to return later. That\u2019s Curran\u2019s genius. It isn\u2019t in the printed notes or the compositions themselves, but in the performance, the mood, the meditativeness, the evolving relationships between tones, the many voices he finds in this one 1990 Sobell guitar, and the joy of being reunited with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After nearly two decades apart, Curran and his Stefan Sobell \u201cButterfly\u201d Model 1 create shimmering, meditative soundscapes rooted in British folk tradition and colored by psychedelic textures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":148843,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"After nearly two decades apart, Curran and his Stefan Sobell \u201cButterfly\u201d Model 1 create shimmering, meditative soundscapes rooted in British folk tradition and colored by psychedelic textures.","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[885],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[1568],"class_list":["post-148804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-album-reviews"],"blocksy_meta":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/buck-bigger.jpg?fit=900%2C677&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":1568,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"kenny-berkowitz","display_name":"Kenny Berkowitz","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Kenny-Berkowitz-Photo_web.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Kenny-Berkowitz-Photo_web.jpg"},"author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148804"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148844,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148804\/revisions\/148844"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148804"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=148804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}