Reviews:

On '33':

"This is one hell of a fantastic collection of sparse solo guitar instrumentals, evoking the memories of John Fahey and his great Takoma label. This album delves into the fast-picking world of Fahey and other great pickers like Robbie Basho, although Joynes seems to concentrate a bit more on the traditional sounds of early blues and folk music and tends to keep it as true to its roots as possible. It's a really lovely collection of rustic home recordings, giving the album a really authentic old style feel.

"The album features a blend of intricate finger-picking styles and some sublime bottleneck playing, and if the liner notes didn't state the recording dates I could quite easily be convinced this was made in the early 20th century. What I really love about this release is the fact that he doesn't try to delve into the avant garde at all, as a lot of new solo guitarists tend to do at the moment: it's plain simple folk music and there will never be anything wrong with that." - Road Records www.roadrecs.com

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"For an atheist like me John Fahey is the closest I can conceive to God, had he existed. In a certain way Fahey was a God - and as all Gods he left a legion of followers who continue to spread his word. Some of them include, most notably, Jack Rose, Ben Chasny, Glenn Jones, Greg Malcom or James Blackshaw, just to name a few. To this list of notable names in the exploration of acoustic guitar and the fingerpicking language a new name must be add : C. Joynes.

"Anglo-Naive and Contemporary Parlour Guitar Vol. 1., released by a small label named Leith Hill Recordings, and limited to an edition of 33 copies, congregates originals and improvisations by C. Joynes, as well some covers and traditional tunes. His language is both a continuation and a revision of what has been called American Primitivism, with strong connections to the Takoma school. In Joynes we discover the face of an America we thought to be forever lost in the era of ipods and 3G mobile phones. Here innocence is still alive, still a word available. There are still new places to discover; lost continents to search – not on google, for sure.

"Never falling in the silly nostalgia and boring melodrama of some nowadays folk and blues artists, C. Joynes looks like to be a strong promise for the future, always spreading the word of God (not the silly old man who has never existed, the other...)" - http://stabbedintheface.blogspot.com/

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"Anglo-Naive And Contemporary Parlour Guitar
cousin's birtday
the other cousin is becoming a father
my camera is getting rusty
i am smelling of heavy dreams
the time is late
so much to be done
it's a beautiful day
the cat is sleeping under the sun
mr c.joynes
thank you for this beauty…"

http://akipo.deviantart.com/

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On 'God Feeds The Ravens':

"Without doubt the most promising – and sadly still unsung – post-Takoma guitarist doing the rounds right now. Some absolutely stunning compositions, extremely well crafted and delivered with pure warmth. Last chance to get this awesome CDR, one I cannot recommend enough. The first batch sold out within a few days." - Second Layer www.secondlayer.co.uk

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"His music is rhythmically driven by his strongly percussive 
finger-picking and the delicately defined fragments of melody ensure 
the tunes linger in the memory long after the last note dies away.
Someone so talented will, undoubtedly, be signed eventually to either a
n independent or major label. In the meantime, if you love imaginative 
guitar playing rooted strongly in traditional music, then this latest 
C Joynes statement is well worth checking out". 
- John Crosby, ex of Q and Mojo magazines, www.myspace.com/john_crosby
....

"English guitarist C. Joynes releases this at a time when it can't be easy for a new name to barge into the market for this sort of thing. Given that James Blackshaw and Jack Rose both seem to have been rather active of late, there's every chance that even the most ardent six (or indeed twelve) string enthusiasts are a bit fatigued by it all. I can heartily recommend you make room for one more however, because this homegrown talent has plenty to contribute to the genre. You'll be entirely unsurprised to hear that Joynes owes a great debt to the Takoma sound of John Fahey et al, picking nimbly through ragtime compositions, and while there must be hundreds of records of that ilk in circulation, this newcomer brings a way above average technique to the table, not to mention an uncommonly beautiful guitar tone. You'll even hear one or two more experimental moments dotted across the album, with experimental, sound collaged backdrops like 'And There Seemed To Be A Great Clot Of Blood (...)' breaking up the guitar solos, which themselves are kept fresh and varied by a clever use of different recording techniques and scenarios. Highly Recommended." – Boomkat 18.03.08
http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=84725

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"C Joynes is an English acoustic guitarist from Cambridge, but sounds as if he was shaped by the same influences as the new school of American primitivism that Jack Rose represents. Joynes's own sleeve notes acknowledge the debt of his Christmas Medley to John Fahey's festive novelty albums, but he's more than just an imitator. Pirandos Tolos's unique tone was supplied by a broken round-backed mandolin. The East African-flavoured Night on Djerba suggests the jazz standard A Night in Tunisia left out overnight in the desert and slowly circled by vultures." - Stewart Lee – The Sunday Times 6.3.8 http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/cd_reviews/article3676416.ece

"British finger-style guitarist C. Joynes calls his music "Anglo-naive and contemporary parlour guitar." That's a fair description of the intimacy inherent in his approach. And it also hints at the open-air mystery of what he does, his epigrammatic re-castings and re-readings of widely-travelled folk melodies and rhythms from a variety of traditions suggesting shared memories that might be intensely universal while seeming strangely out of reach.

"The mass-production of cheap stringed instruments – guitars especially – was, of course, a crucial development to music around the globe, beginning in the late 19th Century and continuing to this day. It has spawned traditions as diverse as the bluegrass band, Indonesian krongcong, and griot guitar, to name just three. And no less crucial was the revelation of the solo guitar as a musical world in and of itself – a portable companion on journeys and around camp fires; an easy-to-carry tool of the trade for the peripatetic working musician, from piedmont bluesman to west African palm wine singer.

"The music presented on God Feeds the Ravens, both original and adapted from folk sources, seems to grow in part from the creative intersections of tradition and invention on acoustic guitar that blossomed with the advent of the record collection. It shows a lineage from the innovations of British finger-stylists like Jansch, Graham, and Renbourn. It reveals even more an affinity with the influential steel-string Americana school of finger-picking that developed in the 1960s, a style that began with a reverential approach to reviving pre-WWII blues and ragtime, and quickly blossomed – it was, after all, the '60s – into the adventurous and globally eclectic solo explorations of players like Fahey, Kottke, and Basho.

"But it doesn't take long to hear that C. Joynes has taken a noticeably different approach. To begin with, his playing eschews obvious displays of virtuosity, of slick moves and scalar runs or complex ornamentation. Indeed, the first thing another guitarist might notice is the spareness of his style – along with the extreme solidity and deep resonance of the way his right thumb hits patterns on the bass strings That resonance and steadiness of bass is important here, as it gives the necessary ground for Joynes' spacious and deceptively simple approach to melody, to theme and variation.

"Further benefiting from that ground and sense of spaciousness is something else at the heart of Joynes' expression: the way he lets a variety of old instruments – guitars mostly, but also mandolins and banjos, in various states of repair and disrepair – sing with their own voices. Fret-buzzes, string rattles, and other sounds become part of the music in a subtle-but-clear way. (It's an approach that is perhaps a healthy antidote to the fetishistic and narrow-minded attitude sometimes taken to vintage guitars and their places within musical history, something that has endeared Joynes to fans of free jazz and pure improv.)

"God Feeds the Ravens unfolds as a seamless listening experience. The clarity and presence of Jones's playing is enriched by its setting in an ever-changing variety of recording environments – from up-close and dry, to outdoors and awash in ambience. And some very subtle and well-placed sonic manipulations add resonance and mystery at times. Joynes' brief liner notes have a slightly Borges-ian tone of scholarly obscurity that adds yet another patina to the proceedings. Overall, this is an interesting document of a deeply personal music that springs from and clings to folk roots: perhaps the composted soil of some not-quite-knowable sonic terroir". - Kevin Macneil Brown – Dusted 21.3.8 http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/4246

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"Outstanding collection of guitar (and other stringed instruments) instrumentals from this superb English player who lives in Cambridge. We may have been plagued in recent years by a number of players who invoke the name of John Fahey (or have it invoked on their behalf by a gushing press release), and who turn out to be no more than vapid bedsitter strummers with an expensive acoustic guitar. But Joynes, I'm here to tell you, is the absolute genuine article. Here he plays an eclectic mixture of traditional English and American folk tunes, nestling alongside a number of original compositions, and the entire album shines – radiating with beauty, assurance and crystal-clear playing.

"Listeners who enjoy the sound of Fahey and other artistes on the Takoma label will be mightily impressed, but there are many other dimensions to explore. Joynes is an accomplished guitarist but also plays banjo, mandolin and zither; he thanks the Carter Family for the banjo (did they lend it to him, or just inspire him to play it?). While he's au fait with American folk forms, including the blues and religious songs (just listen to his version of 'Since I Lay My Burden Down'), and has an interest in Eastern musical forms not unlike Robbie Basho, Joynes seems most at home with English folk music idioms, updating them to some extent, and thereby articulating something about our own traditions. There are eight concise paragraphs of text where he explains the sources for his music, but reveals all sorts of other hidden and scary knowledge; how could you fail to be intrigued by his allusions to Gog and Magog and a cult of animal worship on Wendlebury Camp? Or the glimpsed image of the dark lord, 'Herlequin', who may or may not be an Ancient Briton ling associated with supernatural forces, and who is used to illustrate a point about the most intriguing piece here, the seventh track which appears midway through the album and is not a guitar instrumental at all but a sonic collage of some sort. Its title, too linghty to reproduce here, almost tells a story in itself, as do the notes of Joynes which conceal more than they disclose. All this for a track which lasts 82 seconds.

"Indeed Joynes provides not a few other citations from scholarly works which we're expected to follow up via a trip to our local library, in order to learn more about the full implications of some of his compositions. I also sense that a lot of the music is inextricably bound up with some very deep and personal connections (some of them family-related), which is as it should be; and that he has found through experience that the only fit way of commenting on these profound mysteries is through the use of very oblique statements. ''Success (Version)' is not an allegory', he assures us in his Sphinx-like fashion. Further glimpses into the extraordinary personality of this fellow can be had from the sleeve note penned by Rhodri Davies, the great English harp player and composer, who happens to be a friend of Joynes. The luxury digipack is laden with very sympathetic and symbolic artworks, including landscape and tree imagery which is picked up by tunes like 'Sycamore, Sycamore', and the shipping forecast map of the British Isles is just perfect. All this may suggest that the music you hear is somehow complex and difficult; it isn't. Joynes' playing is remarkably simple and direct; the way he tackles even familiar material demonstrates how he 'strips away kitsch and cliché', and the whole records shines with clarity and honesty. A tremendous album which I recommend."

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On 'The Running Board':

"New self-released disc from this evocative UK guitarist and sound artist in a hand-numbered edition of 99 copies. We also have limited stock of the hand-drawn artist version. Joynes' tongue-in-cheek description of his music as Anglo-naïve/contemporary parlour guitar is actually pretty much on the mark in that he obviously comes out a of a tradition where both Bert Jansch and Davey Graham stand tall but there's a magical, untutored quality to his playing that generates a hell of a lot more atmosphere and actual substance than a whole bunch of his bigger-name peers. Indeed, there are moments of such elusive beauty on this great side that a track like "Grey Eyes" almost feels like the first genuine follow-up to the beautiful sonic portraiture of Loren Mazzacane's Hell's Kitchen Park. A collection of cover versions, traditionals, improvisations and hill-top recordings, this tops even the recent Bo'Weavil disc. Recommended." – Volcanic Tongue 6.3.8 - http://www.volcanictongue.com/artist.php?art=C.%20Joynes

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On 'Pianer Magick':

"English player C Joynes reached us a few weeks ago with his great guitar CD for Bo'Weavil Recordings. Here he is with a mysterious mini-CD Pianer Magick (PR07) for the Cambridge-based CDR label Palimpsest Recordings. Eleven short pieces for the piano appear at first to be inconclusive, abrupt and inscrutable, yet I am persuaded there is much hidden meaning locked in these haiku-like statements. The cover art seems to depict a flock of wild birds, seen through the overlaid rough-hewn mandala with a square cut out of it. Very good." – Ed Pinset – The Sound Projector 05.05.08 http://www.thesoundprojector.com/?s=C+Joynes

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"This is only the second record I've heard from this mysterious English player, in whom I am well pleased. Here be eleven short pieces recorded on the acoustic piano, realised in a single hour-long session at a house in Exmoor, then edited and reshaped about six months later. Joynes himself calls this 'a rudimentary channelling of Debussy, Monk, Morricone, Cage'. In just twenty minutes we hear miniature versions of grand classical symphonies, rendered down into small improvised segments of one or two minutes, yet still packed with a grandeur and ambition that would make Florian Fricke proud. Then we might hear a more modernistic, prepared-paino sound or a dark moody sketch that could have been plucked from a larger Stockhausen composition for the clavier. Joynes occupies so much time and space with his ideas that it's hard to credit this was all squeezed onto a mini CD. Even in his slightly halting attempts to construct a musical phrase, he reveals all the honesty and intellectual weight of a man weighing his words before uttering a profound, inspired truth. I am convinced Joynes is poised to be recognised as one of the enlightened greats dwelling on this sceptred isle."

Ed Pinsent - The Sound Projector 17th Issue 03/09/2008