The British-born, Chicago-based guitar virtuoso James Elkington has served as a freelance axemaster for folks like Richard Thompson and Jeff Tweedy, and he’s a member of the recently-reunited Eleventh Dream Day. On past solo albums, Elkington has proven that he’s a very good singer-songwriter. Elkington released his last album Ever-Roving Eye in 2020, and he’s going in a different direction on his next record.

Me Neither, James Elkington’s next solo record, is a double LP of short, improvised instrumentals. Elkington says that he came up with each of the tracks at his studio, early in the morning, and that he thinks of them as “library music.” Today, he’s shared the title track, a lovely acoustic excursion that sets a nice atmosphere without drawing much attention to himself. Here’s what Elkington says about the project:

I’d improvise and record the first thing that came into my head, quickly record something else on top of that, try to add some random elements, edit it and mix it, then stop before it had the chance to get stale. The only rules I gave myself were that I should make most of the sounds with a guitar, changing the speed or processing of the recordings afterwards to get the effect I was looking for. I think I was hoping it would sound more like how electronic music sounded when it was mostly made from tape-manipulation in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

UPDATE: it looks like the entire first half of Me Neither is already streaming. Listen to it below.

TRACKLIST:

LP1:
01 “No-Shows”
02 “Burial At See”
03 “A Message For The Janesville Kings”
04 “A Round, A Bout”
05 “Look Spectral!”
06 “The 100-Faced Magma”
07 “A Breathable Liquid”
08 “The Permeable Realm”
09 “Section 2”
10 “Double Orchid”
11 “Part The Thin Painter From His Work”
12 “Every Second Morning”
13 “Section 3”
14 “Me Neither”

LP2:
01 “Contact / Twig Estrangement”
02 “New Red Masterpiece”
03 “Cup Cape”
04 “The Bird Renamed”
05 “Psycasts In Love”
06 “Where For Do I Run?”
07 “The Home Counties”
08 “Today’s Dictation”
09 “Untitled”
10 “Sleep Baguettes Sleep”
11 “Infinitu B”
12 “Tree Breather”
13 “The Incredible Waist Of Time”
14 “Nor Yet Door But The One”
15 “The Winner Takes It All”

Me Neither is out 12/8 on No Quarter.