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On Oh Joy and Beyond, Ben Reynolds pushes his Fahey-isms in both creative directions - traditional and abstract. On two of the first three songs of this release, Reynolds' guitarwork is very eloquent and stately, featuring nimble picking that portrays the more traditional approach to folk music, similar to Hala Strana or Jack Rose. On the other three songs, he gets much more avant and amorphous, highly affecting his guitar and using a subtle drum machine pulse to create something more akin to Flying Saucer Attack. The album opens up at a deliberate pace with "Drop of Lake." Each note seems to roll off Reynolds' pick, like beads of water off the roof of a tent. As the song progresses, the pace picks up substantiatlly to a steady downpour, each note and phrase still sounding delicate and pure. "Dwellers Forever" opens with a soft drum machine gallop as Reynolds plays a fast, teetering four note repetition. As the pattern drones on into oblivion, fluttering strums of a second guitar add bright colors, as soft keyboard tones fill out the spectrum. "My Hand the Universe" is again more traditional, this time Reynolds' guitar playing sound much more dark and emphatic. Trills from a flute or recorder add an eerie tone, sounding like coyote calls in the distance; if someone had told me this was a lost Hala Strana song, I would have believed it whole heartedly. The FSA influence is most keenly heard on the fourth track, "Oh Time Thy Pyramids." The guitar creates a big bellowing tone, with the softest of drum machine ripples, sounding like not much more than the flick of a fan. The big shimmering glob of tone gradually builds through the song's ten minutes, eventually emerging from the soft shadow from the drum machine before extinguishing and softly fading away. The album's last song, "The Birth and Death of Everyone," does drastic things to the sound of the guitar, turning it into dark, buzzing balls of lava, slowly spewing out of the lip of the machine and oozing down into the pool of fire below. Like many of his psych underground brethren, this CDR album from Reynolds is but one of a smattering of releases on several different labels. I can only hope the rest can come close to matching the fluency and command of the guitar Reynolds shows on Oh Joy and Beyond.

Ben Reynolds at Amazon & Insound