Hoo boy, y’all should see the sentimental garbage that I wrote during my first attempt at this (you shouldn’t actually, and you never will).

I found Visions of the Country somewhere between 12 and 15 months ago (a blurry era), and since then I’ve had the following transcendent experiences with it while driving:

1. Approaching Baltimore as the sun rose over it

2. Taking empty back roads, unlit in every sense, from DC back to Charlottesville

3. Taking a train across the Scottish West Highlands

4. The moment the Rockies became visible after spending approximately thirty years travelling through Kansas

Your mileage may vary, but the key thing is that I’ve spent an ungodly amount of time alone with this album. The first step is to make it a companion; only then can one summon the sort of credulity that full immersion requires. Even before Basho breaks out his operatic warble, the whole affair runs the risk of becoming, as Chester Cheetah would say, dangerously cheesy.

Anyway, Visions of the Country is as close as music has gotten to a religious experience for me. I’m sure everyone’s is something different, but I honestly feel the need to evangelize about this thing. By way of recruitment, here are some lists that Visions of the Country has been added to on RYM (they’re all apt): records from another planet, BECOMING THE WONDERFUL YOGA MOM (which is excellent and has introduced me to a ton of good new age stuff), Best albums of my fuckin’ life, and Robbie Basho Albums Ranked.

When you’re into it, I guess you’re into it. It’s a natural extension of its uniqueness – in the absence of any substitutes, the enthusiast has to commit fully to fanaticism. Passionate fandom’s a funny thing – by all accounts, there are people that feel similarly about something like Kid A. What an unbelievable stroke of luck! For seventeen years people have been doing their absolute best to one-up and expand upon their exact musical sensibility. Yet if there were a single other album that sounded like Visions of the Country, I imagine I wouldn’t be half as enthusiastic (a weekly reminder for the Hip Replacement old heads: this is exactly how I feel about you-know-which album). I suppose that’s the romance of enjoying something one-of-a-kind: allowing yourself to believe that your taste or life circumstance is somehow distinct because it requires such specific attention.

If the cover hasn’t already piqued your interest then I’m probably out of luck, but some words about the actual sounds: Robbie Basho was probably a really weird dude. Over the course of his life, he went through several phases of utter obsession with various non-Anglo musical traditions, which was probably unimaginably difficult from a consumer standpoint in the 1950’s. In fact, his last name’s actually Robinson; Basho was adopted in honor of the Japanese poet. Point being, Visions of the Country lies at the end of the road of guitar mind-expansion, the rumored final boss that appears only after you have taken in every possible method of wringing noise out of an acoustic guitar (and occasionally piano; rarer still, strings). I haven’t listened to it, but I’m pretty sure that people like that Captain Beefheart album Trout Mask Replica because the music is so unparseable, so incapable of being mapped to expectation, that by default it must have been intricately, brilliantly composed. Even if I can’t begin to imagine how Basho’s moving his fingers (of which he has at least 15), there’s never a doubt that the result is exactly what he intended. It’s basically a guitar string orchestra, complemented by vocals for which words fail me. Yeah, sorry. It’s gospel music but about nature, and you’re either riding for it or you closed this email two paragraphs ago.

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I’ve not yet been able to explain this to anybody without sounding like an idiot, but it didn’t click for me that Visions of the Country was about the exact place that I now live until I got here. Yes, yes, the song called Rocky Mountain Raga might have tipped me off, but, uh, death of the author my dude. There’s a very real feeling of awe that being all up in the Rockies inspires, and it’s exactly the sound of this album (Virginians: for a similar sensation check out I-26 between Johnson City, TN and Asheville, NC).

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Robbie Basho, I’m told, died while undergoing some sort of experimental chiropractic procedure. As I understand it, the chiropractor said something like ok, hold still, grabbed his shoulders, and twisted too hard.