Jeff Parker: Forfolks review – a meditative gem

Best known as the jazz-facing guitarist in the influential Chicago post-rock outfit Tortoise, Parker, now based in LA, wears many berets: band leader, film composer, unstarry collaborator. Parker’s third solo album for the International Anthem label is a meditative gem that breaks with the more fully fleshed out style of his two previous outings.

The New Breed (2016) memorialised Parker’s late father; last year’s Suite for Max Brown was dedicated to his mother, Maxine. This year’s Forfolks does away with collaborators in favour of self-quoting loops and minimal solo guitar – impressionistic daubings of notes playing out in the space between jazz, ambient and the daily practice of quietly sketching out a tune for oneself.

There are deconstructed takes here on standards My Ideal and Thelonious Monk’s Ugly Beauty, both suffused with inquiring, beatless calm. The closing track, La Jetée, circles back to Jetty by Tortoise (1998) and Isotope 217’s iteration (1997). A few moments into a new track, the delicately arpeggiating Suffolk, Parker almost replays Tortoise’s most famous riff from 1998’s TNT. The title, meanwhile, makes reference to the culturally rich part of eastern Virginia where Parker was born – an area historically at the forefront of the fight against slavery.