2005 release ** "Painter, guitarist, composer, and free author Steffen Basho-Junghans lives in Berlin and Thuringia, Germany. He has been highly influential on the eastern German guitar scene since the late '70s. Largely a self-taught artist and musician, his style is best categorized as eccentric and highly personal. Junghans uses steel-string acoustic guitars, combining archaic sounds with altered tunings and a plethora of divergent connections. Traditional European, American Indian, and Asian scales create a landscape with circuitous ties to East Indian instruments like the vina and sarong. He adds folk and spiritual music ideas for good measure.  The name Basho pays homage to the largely forgotten but seminal guitarist Robbie Basho, who was one of the innovators of what we now call New Age or world music on the guitar. A poet, father of the American raga, and champion of open tuning techniques, Basho studied East Indian music with sarod master Ali Akbar Khan and closely followed the music of Ravi Shankar. He was an early mentor of Windham Hill's founder, William Ackerman, and blazed a trail for players like Alex De Grassi, Leo Kottke, John Fahey, and Peter Lang. Alien Letter incorporates all of these imprints in one of the more unique visions you are likely to encounter. If viewed as a suite for solo guitar, it would be unusual enough. In defining it as a jazz record, musical boundaries need major expansion. It does not swing and rarely follows a discernable pattern; the compositions often sound as if created in process."