With his newest addition ‘GUITARWORKS II’, The Mortal Prophets, otherwise known as the experimental vessel of composer and visual artist John Beckmann, step further into the liminal, crafting an album that feels like a series of whispered coordinates to places you can’t find on any map. Across sixteen concise, wordless pieces, Beckmann trades narrative for resonance, turning the electric guitar into a kind of archaeological tool, unearthing the sonic dust of forgotten landscapes.
Each track bears the name of a pre-Columbian archaeological site; ‘Chaco Canyon’, ‘Cahokia Mounds’, ‘Serpent Mound’, and the music mirrors these locations’ quiet endurance. Notes stretch and dissolve into air, as if weathered by centuries of wind. Vintage amps and analogue effects lend a tactile warmth, the slight imperfections making the tones feel human, lived-in, and impossibly fragile.
While the original ‘GUITARWORKS’ occasionally flirted with cinematic blues and vocal textures, this sequel abandons all that for pure instrumental devotion. It sits comfortably alongside the looping systems of Robert Fripp, the drifting stillness of Stars of the Lid, and the sparse, haunted spaces explored by Brian Eno. But Beckmann’s voice as a guitarist and sonic cartographer keeps it from feeling derivative, his work is less about imitation than it is about attunement, listening for the hum between history and the present.
At under four minutes each, these pieces feel like small, deliberate rituals, meant to be revisited in solitude. They reward patience. They ask for stillness. And in their quiet way, they map something much larger, the sacred geographies that exist not just in stone and soil, but in the echo of memory itself.
If ‘GUITARWORKS’ was a doorway, ‘GUITARWORKS II’ is the slow walk into the vast and quiet beyond.
