AuldLangSyne Review by Dan Warburton in The Wire #336

Olaf Rupp
AuldLangSyne
Dromos/Gligg CD-R

While many of his fellow Berlineres seem to have taken Ludwig Van Der Rohe at his word (or rather, Robert Browning's) - less is more - guitarist Olaf Rupp has consistently adopted the opposite track, combating the acoustic instrument's inherent lack of sustain by producing intense hyperactive flurries of notes that derive more from flamenco rasgueados and Chinese pipa technique (Rupp holds his guitar upright like the Chinese lute) than from traditional jazz fingerpicking.
But on three of the nine tracks on AuldLangSyne - which you'll find tucked into a crack in the vaguely coffin-shaped hexagonal leather pouch along with an original engraving by Antonio Poppe, whose artwork also seems to adorn the cover - Rupp also plays electric guitar, and the volume allows him breathing space to skirt around the raw edges of feedback and explore ringing harmonics and variations in dynamics. Even in the acoustic pieces, there are occasional pools of calm in the storm of fluttery strumming that reveal an acute ear for melodic line, a sense of clear harmonic forethought and a feel for a large-scale form often lacking in-the-moment frenzy of his earlier work.

Dan Warburton in The Wire 336 (Feb 12)