Rarely does an instrumental guitar album provide such a distinctive atmosphere as Ben Van Bonn's second album, Further Than Thought. All twelve tracks were recorded live in the historic sanctuary at St. Ann & The Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Brooklyn Heights. Gone are the lyrics, drums, and auxiliary instruments of his previous records, leaving behind nothing but exquisitely fingerpicked guitar compositions. Van Bonn weaves strange aquatic sounds into the album creating a pervasive sense of mental travel—as if certain tidepools and bays in North America were linked by underwater portals. With Further Than Thought, Ben Van Bonn nods at Elizabeth Cotten's left-handed ingenuity, John Fahey's hedonistic blues ragas, and Robbie Basho's soaring interpretations of North American landscapes, while taking a clear-cut detour away from imitating these innovators. Drawing on a decade of carefree fingerpicking, Van Bonn devoted himself to two years of focused practice using one alternate tuning. He then organized his array of riffs into musical forms. The result is Further Than Thought, a polished suite of new music for the steel string guitar.