A monthly Pitchfork column about experimental, avant-garde, and outsider music, by Marc Masters & Grayson Currin
Sad to hear of the passing of composer and electronic pioneer Richard Lainhart
R.I.P. Richard Lainhart
above: live at Silent Barn, 02-18-2011
Richard Lainhart Concert Playlist (Arts Center of Capitol Region/@Rake) on Youtube
First Five Parts of Richard Lainhart’s “Advanced Synthesis” Tutorial
In the two years we’ve been doing The Out Door, we’ve talked to, and about, a lot of solo guitar players. The ’90s resurgence of one of the most influential solo players ever, John Fahey, is still having a ripple effect— in fact, you could argue the effect is as great as it’s ever been, with more players (especially young ones) influenced by his mix of old blues, country, and classical. But, as we discussed in our June column, a lot of them are finding ways to move beyond simple Fahey echoes.
As we’ve listened to more and more of this new generation, and as we’ve read and contributed to year-end lists the past few weeks, we realized there are so many good solo guitar records lately that we could compile a very solid top 10 (sorry, make that 11!) just from this year. So we did, and here it is! (Click on names to hear samples from each, many courtesy of the excellent Experimedia).
EDIT: We were inexcusably remiss in forgetting Noveller’s Glacial Glow, one of the best 2011 LPs of any kind, solo guitar or otherwise. Consider it the floating, unnumbered entry in this list of 11 great solo guitar records— it’s as good as any of the others.
10. The Dove Azima - The Dove Azima (Oak Hill) Lonely Jandek-like ramblings from the mysterious Zachary Hay.
9. Dean McPhee - Son of the Black Peace (Blast First Petite) Aching electric guitar strains echoing Loren Connors at his most melodic.
8. Hallock Hill - The Union (Hundred Acre) Rural upstate New York musings that are as weighty as they are gentle.
7. Evan Caminiti - When California Falls Into the Sea (Handmade Birds) Dark, dense clouds of electric guitar meditation.
6. Sir Richard Bishop - Graviton Polarity Generator (Self-Released) An unpredictable set of eerie drones and chilling electric reverberations from the unclassifiable SRB.
5. Black Eagle Child - Lobelia (Preservation) This elegy to family life sometimes sounds like a full band record, but it’s primarily from the mind of the brilliant Michael Jantz.
4. Cian Nugent - Doubles (VHF) Two sidelong journeys into acoustic revery.
3. Chuck Johnson - A Struggle, Not a Thought (Strange Attractors) Remarkably thoughtful acoustic essays, perhaps his best yet.
2. Bill Orcutt - How the Thing Sings (eMego) The ex-Harry Pussy guitarist takes another leap forward in his singular reinvention of how to attack a guitar.
1. Glenn Jones - The Wanting (Thrill Jockey) The best solo acoustic guitar record of 2011 is filled with gripping stories, majestic melodies, and masterful playing.
10. Eyvind Kang: “When you’re listening to music, you listen to it with a friend one day and it sounds one way. You listen to it with another friend the next day, and it sounds a little different. Sometimes the greatest pleasure of listening is not the music that you’re listening to; it’s the person that you’re listening to it with.”
9. Alessandro Bosetti: “Music by itself is mute. That’s one of the beautiful things about it. It just talks about itself. That’s also one of the things that scared me about it originally.”
8. Mikey of Burmese: “Everything [in our music] is structured, but there is room for… not necessarily improvisation, but improvement. It’s like when you put two magnets of opposite polarity against each other. We are definitely going for precision, but we rely on chaos in order to achieve that precision.”
7. Cultus Sabbati: “People arguing about what constitutes “black metal” are missing the point. Black metal doesn’t need to be talked about; it needs to be listened to.”
6. Christina Carter of Charalambides: “The whole concept that we’re trying to recreate a 1960s sound is completely false. Or the whole idea that we’re positing ourselves as rural musicians— we’ve always been an urban band. We’ve lived in Houston, Austin, San Francisco, New York. I don’t even know how to plant a garden!”
5. Foot Village: “If there’s anyone watching this that’s in the army and can get us some sort of guest pass to come on base and shoot a bazooka, that is a goal of a band. We’ll need to fire four at the same time because there are four of us.”
4. Pauline Oliveros: “Students always learn more from each other than they do from their professor. They learn by doing and not by trying to soak up information from one person…So I don’t say much in my classes. We just do things.”
3. Chris Watson: “I’d never lived inside [a train] or traveled with one in such a way. I was literally encapsulated by it. That process really hooked into me in the end, and I began to need to feel that source of power. Capturing it became a real objective for me because it’s really challenging— it’s just so fucking loud. You feel it as much as hear it.”
2. Chris Reifert of Autopsy: “If it entertains you, cool— read it, listen to it, watch it. But if it horrifies or disgusts you or scares you, then don’t listen to it. You can put the book down or turn the movie off or turn off the CD player. I think it’s funny when people get so freaked out, man. Well, who’s making you listen to this? Not me. I didn’t buy it for you.”
1. Eugene Chadbourne: “There’s something really great about completely clearing a room with music. Offending people just with sound. It’s easy to clear a room taking a shit on stage or doing something stupid like that. But to just get people out with music - that’s something that’s not to be sniffed at really.”
