Scott Key - This Forest and the Sea (Reissue) (1976/2013)

Excellent 1976 private press acoustic album, self-recorded at various places in Colorado, and filled with beautiful fingerstyle acoustic guitar, plus some atonal bottleneck slide, string scrapes and drones. Although almost completely instrumental, what lyrics there are tend towards the dark and the satiric. The obvious points of comparison are John Fahey and Leo Kottke, although Scott Key certainly has his own presence and style, differences in tone and color and attack, which he attributes to his background in rock bands. Overall, there is a brooding, loner folk/psych feel, most evident on the phenomenal, effects-heavy, almost 11-minute long title track. The 20-page booklet sports engaging, funny, and insightful notes by Key, photos, plus the text to poem that inspired the title track; as a nod to the forest, the booklet is printed on FSC recycled, chlorine-free, 100% post-consumer fiber paper manufactured using biogas energy.