Berlin in October can be horrifying. In many years it was just cold and grey. This year however, the sun has been shining every day. When we visit Steffen Basho-Junghans in his apartment and studio in East Berlin, he is about to complete one of the tunes for his new album, entitled ‘Days of the Dragon’ to be released in the ‘Wooden Guitar Series’ on Locust Music later this year. His apartment looks like he´s getting prepared for the winter. In his kitchen, plants are growing all over the place and you can´t help but think of a jungle. The idea of landscape comes to mind, a term he often uses when describing his music as well as his paintings and drawings. Even though Steffen Basho-Junghans is best known for his guitar music, he also works as a visual artist. He grew up in a small village in the South Harz, a hilly rural area in East Germany. “Because of that, I have a strong sense for the atmosphere of the seasons. For example, I can feel it two days in advance when it will snow for the first time in the year. The album I´m currently recording has a distinct autumnal feel to it”, Steffen describes the sound while he plays us parts of the album.

Listening to ‘Days of the Dragon’ with its pastoral guitar Ragas brings back memories of the 2003 release ‘Rivers and Bridges’ that came out on Strange Attractors Audio House (SAAH). “The title track is actually from 1997”, says Steffen, “but when I listened to the tape, I noticed a few background noises that I couldn´t filter out. I tried to replay it, but it´s not that easy playing a tune again after 8 years have passed.” Steffen records everything at home in his art studio. He uses small hanging microphones, which make his guitar playing sound very rich and warm on his records. “Luckily, I live in a pretty quiet area. Still, it sometimes happens that while I´m recording, a truck passes by even though there had not been any noise on the street for an hour.”

‘Days of the Dragon’ will already be Steffen´s third release this year. In February, the Italian Sillyboy label released ‘Unknown Music I.’ In June, ‘Unknown Music II’ followed on Preservation Records from Australia. “I got the idea for the Unknown Music Series a few years ago. Sometimes late at night, I don´t have anything specific in mind while I just play around with the guitar. In the middle of the session I often get carried away by the music. When I listen to the recording the next morning, I kind of like it. So I got the idea to release these sessions as something very personal, similar to a page from a diary. The concept of the Unknown Music Series is to release a whole session instead of compiling an album out of different tracks I have.”

Steffen´s approach to music and painting is very intuitive. He explains: “Over the course of weeks, sometimes months, I assemble ideas in my mind, which I then try to realize while playing freely. Some ideas disappear and some stay. My outside influences, like the light of a certain season or a night around town are absorbed on a subconscious level. I usually don´t write things down. My music originates both in free playing and composition, but I don´t want to translate the music into a different language. If I would write my music on sheets, it would probably make the work on the details easier. At the same time however, I would have to use a transistory language that I don´t consider necessary for my interaction with the guitar. It´s like John Coltrane said: ‘You go on stage and strike the first note. What´s coming afterwards, is pure adventure.”

Steffen Basho-Junghans has been exploring sound on record with 6 and 12 string guitars for a decade now. So far, he has released more than 10 albums, many of them on SAAH, some on his own Blue Moment Arts imprint. Since 2000, there has been a release for SAAH every year. “This year is an exception because I had so many other projects I was working on”, says Steffen, “I got in contact with Chris (of SAAH) through Glenn Jones. I knew Glenn from my trip to California in 1994. In 1999, I sent him some tapes and he convinced me that we had to find a U.S. label to release some of my music. That led to the release of ‘Songs of the Earth’ on Sublingual Records. Back then, Chris was doing a singles label and asked me if I would do a single, too. I was thinking ‘Why not?’ and sent him some stuff. Just a little later, Chris called me and we agreed on releasing a full length album, which was ‘Inside.’ ‘Inside’ was recorded in one session. The three tracks were recorded on January 1st, 2nd and 3rd, 1999. When I finished the third track, I just thought ‘Oh shit, another album finished.”

Despite the recent interest in American folk blues guitar, Basho-Junghans doesn´t get the recognition that fellow fingerpickers like Jack Rose and Glenn Jones receive. “It´s probably because people can´t categorize me. Especially here in Germany, it´s hard to get properly recognized. For the Folkies, my music is not folky and exotic enough. For the Free Jazzers it´s not free enough. And for the people listening to contemporary guitar music, I´m too far away from the mainstream. There´s this one guitar magazine called ‘Acoustic Guitar’, which is the main publication for guitar music in Germany. They´re not even giving me bad reviews and if you don´t get any reviews at all, people don´t know you. That´s why it´s hard to get gigs in Germany.”

German listeners don´t know what they´re missing. Steffen Basho-Junghans´ guitar playing is emotionally moving and challenging at the same time. You never know what´s coming next. Sometimes, like on ‘Rivers and Bridges’, he plays guitar Ragas in the Takoma tradition of John Fahey, Robbie Basho or Max Ochs. On releases like ‘Inside’, ‘7 Books’ or ‘Waters in Azure’, which Steffen considers his most contemporary sounding recording, he´s leaning more to the guitar avantgarde with influences ranging from jazz to 20th century classical. “My music doesn´t have anything to do with songs, it´s rooted in the instrumental tradition. My basis has always been the music itself, not the classic song structure.” You can also hear strong influences from Indian music. Steffen explains: “The Raga is a compositional form in which the musician plays the main part after a longer intro (the Alap). The intro usually serves the purpose to slowly open up the character of the Raga. It also introduces the personality of the musician. Raga means ‘What colors the senses.’ There are Ragas for every time of the day, for every season.”

No matter how Basho-Junghans delivers his vision, what he almost always succeeds in is transporting the listener into a trance-like state. Nonetheless, Steffen doesn´t like to be put into a certain category. “Many times I read that I´m playing psychedelic music. But psychedelic doesn´t have anything to do with my music. It´s certainly spiritual, but there´s a big difference between psychedelic and spiritual. Psychedelic is fleeing from reality. Spirituality means living everyday life by a certain philosophy.”