quête:rhys chatham

"The beauty of all this, as well as its sorrowful brutality, is even more powerful and stupefying since Ghédalia's sudden departure. Because retrospectively, not only is this recording the trace of a rare moment in a Parisian garden, it also summons a ghost, that of a loved one that is gone, and of his voice, which is fully alive here."

Tazartes and Chatham had met once in 1977 at CBGC's and had not seen each other since then when they were asked by their mutual agent to play a private show in Paris. This happened in September 2018 in a house with a garden where sax player Steve Lacy had lived back in the 1990s. This album presents the recording of this show plus another show at La semaine du bizarre festival in Montreuil, France a year later, mixed with a couple of studio sessions. This was probably the last music Tazartès, who died in February 2021, recorded. His unique singing blends perfectly with Chatham's loops on electric guitar, trumpet and flute.

Rhys Chatham is a composer, guitarist, trumpet player and flutist from Manhattan, currently living in Paris, who altered the DNA of rock and created a new type of urban music by fusing the overtone-drenched minimalism of the early 60s with the relentless, elemental fury of the Ramones — the textural intricacies of the avant-garde colliding with the visceral punch of electric guitar-slinging punk rock. Starting with Guitar Trio in the 1970s and culminating with A Crimson Grail for 200 electric guitars in 2009, Chatham has been working for over 30 years to make use of armies of electric guitars in special tunings to merge the extended-time music of the sixties and seventies with serious hard rock. Parallel with his rock-influenced pieces, Chatham has been working with various brass configurations since 1982, and recently has developed a completely new approach to collaborations, improvised and compositional pieces involving trumpet through performances and recordings that started in 2009. Chatham’s trumpet work deploys extended playing techniques inherited from the glory days of the early New York minimalist and 70s loft jazz period. Starting in 2014, Rhys has been touring a solo program featuring an electric guitar in a Pythagorean tuning, Bb trumpet, and bass, alto and C flutes. Rhys was introduced to electronic music and composition by Morton Subotnick in the late 60s, and in the early seventies he studied composition with La Monte Young and played in Tony Conrad’s early group. These composers are, along with Terry Riley, the founders of American minimalism and were a profound influence on Chatham’s work. Chatham’s instrumentation ranges from the seminal composition composed in 1977 entitled Guitar Trio for 3 electric guitars, electric bass and drums, to the epoch evening-length work for 100 electric guitars, An Angel Moves Too Fast to See, composed in 1989… all the way to Chatham’s recent composition for 200 electric guitars, Crimson Grail, which was commissioned by the City of Paris for La Nuit Blanche Festival in 2005. A completely new version of the piece was commissioned by the Lincoln Center Outdoor Summer Festival in 2009. What does a composer do after mounting many performances with forces of 100-200 electric guitars? The composer gets back to basics, at least that’s what Rhys does! Along with the G100 and G3 programs, Chatham is currently offering a solo program, an evening length work with the composer performing himself on electric guitar, trumpets and bass alto and C flutes.

French cult artist Ghedalia Tazartes is an uncompromising character who defied categorization. He recorded alone more than 20 albums, calling his Art “Impromuz” for lack of a better term. Before the years 2000s, his public appearances remained exceptional events. Ghédalia Tazartès’ music has always been a mystery. It switches from musique concrète to – existing or invented – ethnic music, from poetry to noise, or from loops and collages to sad and extremely beautiful tunes in a second, but it constantly is in flux and coherent. In 2004, Ghedalia finally decided to do live performances again. He first worked with other musicians (Les Reines d’Angleterre, David Fenech & Jac Berrocal, Norscq & Black Sifichi, Nicolas Lelièvre) then went solo for ten years. Since then Tazartes has played many shows across Europe including a show in the Patti Smith exhibition at Fondation Cartier in Paris and a cinemix to the “Haxan” silent movie in 2008. In 2018 Ghedalia decided to stop playing solo and to collaborate with other musicians again: Maya Dunietz, Rhys Chatham, Chris Corsano and Dennis Tyfus, Quentin Rollet and Jérôme Lorichon. Ghedalia died at his home in Paris on 9th February 2021.

Wrekmeister Harmonies, the duo of JR Robinson and Esther Shaw, are sonic shape shifters with expansive ideas. From special performances to collaborations the band have worked with David Yow (Jesus Lizard) Ryley Walker, Ken Vandermark, Bruce Lamont, Mark Solotroff, Sanford Parker, Jamie Fennely (Mind Over Mirrors), The Body, Mary Lattimore, Olivia Block, Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu), Chris Brokaw, Fred Lonberg-Holm and Thor Harris (Swans). Inspired by artists such as Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham, and Lou Reed, the duo approach each album as a new sonic adventure. Flowers in the Spring was born of deep, careful listening as much as composing. It explores music as a meditative practice with a focus on microtonal shifts and intersectional overtones. Robinson explains: "It"s the subtle movements within and without, the fine threads of sound, loud or quiet, interior or exterior that become valuable." Limiting himself to just four mixer channels on each piece; precisely layering guitar and electronics, intently listening and manipulating either the intensity or the duration of each loop to yield unexpected interactions, moments of beauty as well as dissonance. "Flowers in Spring" emerges from fizzing distortion, hewing monolithic slabs of drone from the rock face while electronics push through fissures. "Fuck the Pigs" uses layers of noise as it metaphorically shifts into the depths of winter, arctic winds howling while the guitar scars like frost across a windowpane. In contrast "A Shepherd Stares Into the Sun" is pure light and heat, overwhelming in its sheer celestial enormity. "Flowers Variation" was born of nature"s microscopic subterranean movements in its primordial gloom and buzzing synth pads. Each track holds multitudes of micro sonic details coming together to form the album"s expansive ecosystem.

Wrekmeister Harmonies, the duo of JR Robinson and Esther Shaw, are sonic shape shifters with expansive ideas. From special performances to collaborations the band have worked with David Yow (Jesus Lizard) Ryley Walker, Ken Vandermark, Bruce Lamont, Mark Solotroff, Sanford Parker, Jamie Fennely (Mind Over Mirrors), The Body, Mary Lattimore, Olivia Block, Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu), Chris Brokaw, Fred Lonberg-Holm and Thor Harris (Swans). Inspired by artists such as Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham, and Lou Reed, the duo approach each album as a new sonic adventure. Flowers in the Spring was born of deep, careful listening as much as composing. It explores music as a meditative practice with a focus on microtonal shifts and intersectional overtones. Robinson explains: "It"s the subtle movements within and without, the fine threads of sound, loud or quiet, interior or exterior that become valuable." Limiting himself to just four mixer channels on each piece; precisely layering guitar and electronics, intently listening and manipulating either the intensity or the duration of each loop to yield unexpected interactions, moments of beauty as well as dissonance. "Flowers in Spring" emerges from fizzing distortion, hewing monolithic slabs of drone from the rock face while electronics push through fissures. "Fuck the Pigs" uses layers of noise as it metaphorically shifts into the depths of winter, arctic winds howling while the guitar scars like frost across a windowpane. In contrast "A Shepherd Stares Into the Sun" is pure light and heat, overwhelming in its sheer celestial enormity. "Flowers Variation" was born of nature"s microscopic subterranean movements in its primordial gloom and buzzing synth pads. Each track holds multitudes of micro sonic details coming together to form the album"s expansive ecosystem.

Plastic Crimewave Syndicate returns with one collective foot in overdriven space-biker scuzz rock, but the other bigfoot kicking upward into new galaxies of synth punk, no-prog, and freek funk. Yes, dare we say it, the new PCWS LP, Tales From the Golden Skull, GROOVES--but from the perspective of the Japan n' Kraut/Eurorock undergrounds, coated in some nasty Windy City grime. Aided by the Chicago Cosmonaut Couriers Crew, ala famed renaissance man Mac Blackout (synths/horns/electronics), Przemyslaw Krys Drazek (trumpet) of longtime zone-jammers Drazek Fuscaldo/Mako Sica, Will MacLean on Moog keytar (!-- of local Silver vocoder-ed Apples lovin' treasures Protovulcan), plus the oldest-school synthlord Bil Vermette, who's been modulating since the 70s. We'll call Tales From the Golden Skull a near-concept lp (aren't they always?) that looks back at fallen friends and collaborators, and then into the unwritten golden future (as PCW himself hit the golden 50). The sonic journey dips into dark textural valleys, and chugging riffs rising to thee fiery heavens, as the thundering-but-subtle rhythm section of Jose "Beast but Best" Bernal and Rob "Dead Feathers" Rodak know when to crash and when to burn (one). Sir PCW lays down his trademark big muff-blastage and echo-cries, to channel the despair and feral bark of the mighty Vega/Hammill/Iggy/Dickie P/Haino/Mojo-Risin/Mizutani, but also knows when to shut up for some layered instrumental Embryo/Harvester/Fausty trance rock and dabbed/dubbed out "not-quite-shoegazin" calmness in the eye of the Ur-storm. This might be the most expansive, detailed yet furious PCWS LP yet, recorded at Rec Room studios with Eric Block, who has done all from a band with Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley to recorded Rhys Chatham 100+-peeps guitar orchestras. So strap the headphones on and absorb the tales of this spaced ritual-rock opus. Artwork - Steve Krakow

In meteorology, the word Norther refers to a cold wind that blows down from the north. For Liverpool’s Ex-Easter Island Head, it’s also an apt title for the strange and multi-faceted sound of their new album
that now descends upon the world at large: ever shifting, a multiplicity of sounds both acoustic and manipulated, and yet one that still moves as part of a single mighty breeze. At times it might recall the
experiments of Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca, the widescreen beauty of The Necks, the relentless experimentation of Arnold Dreyblatt or the boundary-pushing roster of Kompakt Records, yet ultimately this is music that has no direct compare

Some of the earliest works by American composer Phill Niblock, including three never before released pieces: "Index" (1969), "Tenor," and "Boston III" (both from 1972). Until now, it's been impossible to encounter Niblock's compositions from earlier than the 1960s, a reality thankfully rectified by the long overdue publication of this Boston/Tenor/Index LP on Alga Marghen.

"Tenor" (1972) represents the first evolution of Niblock's musical thought towards the aesthetics of microtones, overtones, and drones which the composer would develop in following decades. The piece was recorded by the photographer Martin Bough on tenor saxophone and gradually dubbed back and forth by the composer in his New York studio. "Boston III" (1972) was recorded at the Intermedia Sound studio in Boston with Rhys Chatham (flute, voice), Martin Bough (tenor saxophone), and Gregory Reeve (viola, voice); the composer himself also contributed with his voice. The LP also includes "Index" (1969), an improvised sound performance by the composer himself. Guitar (both its body and strings), fingers and fingering fuse in a vehement action around which barely listenable sounds and resonances vibrate. Considering the extended pulsation as an organic blend of impulse, rhythm, drive, strength, vitality and passion, the end of this sole solo in Niblock's complete oeuvre is not defined by the fixed duration of the piece but as the consequence of the tiredness of the performer. The music changes according to the loudness of playback. The interaction of the upper harmonics changes especially, with much richer overtone patterns being produced at louder levels.

"Love Is Overtaking Me", originally released in 2008 comprises 21 demos and home recordings of unreleased pop, folk and country songs from Arthur"s vast catalogue. While much critical and popular affection for Russell"s music has come about well after his untimely death from AIDS in 1992, many fellow artists believed in his genius and were drawn to collaborate with him during his lifetime. The legendary producer John Hammond (Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen) recorded Russell on several occasions; a number of these recordings can be heard on "Love Is Overtaking Me". Alongside songs recorded with various incarnations of The Flying Hearts, a group formed by Russell with Ernie Brooks whose shifting line up included, by turns, Jerry Harrison, Rhys Chatham, Jon Gibson, Peter Gordon and Peter Zummo as well as Larry Saltzman and David Van Tieghem. Several other Russell projects are represented on Love Is Overtaking Me, including The Sailboats, Turbo Sporty and Bright & Early. Compiled from over eight hours of material, "Love Is Overtaking Me" reaches back further to Russell"s first compositions from the early `70s and spans forward to his very last recordings, made at home in 1991. Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear contributed mixing, restoration and editing to the album, whose tracks were selected by Audika"s Steve Knutson, Ernie Brooks and Russell"s companion, Tom Lee. Several songs feature prominently in Matt Wolf"s film "Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell". Extensive "Love Is Overtaking Me" liner notes by Tom Lee provide an intimate perspective on Russell"s diverse catalogue, which spanned an extraordinary diversity of styles and won the love of artistic communities that would seem utterly disparate, from Philip Glass, John Cage and Allen Ginsberg to rock bands like The Talking Heads and The Modern Lovers; the pre-Studio 54 disco-party scene of Nicky Siano"s Gallery and David Mancuso"s Loft; and DJ-producers like Francois Kevorkian and Larry Levan, among others.

Screen Time is a series of instrumental guitar pieces recorded during the summer of 2020 as the world confronted the pandemic shutdown and as the people of good conscious stood up against the oppression of racist police oppression and murder. How much screen time does a parent allow a child? How much screen time does a child need to realise a world which has the means to coexist as a community in shared exchange?
The cover image of Screen Time is of a youngster curled into a book, the pages vibratory with text radiating through the skin, blood and bone – an aspect entirely missing from digital media, though the actuality of transparency in our daily lives through streaming etc we can only hope leads to the awareness of fairness.
Screen Time is in reflection to dream time, a state of meditation, hypnagogia and pillow talk.

Thurston Moore born 1958, moved to NYC 1976, started Sonic Youth 1980, edited the fanzines KILLER, Sonic Death, and Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal, started Ecstatic Peace records + tapes label, senior editor of Ecstatic Peace Library, and Flowers & Cream, edited books at Rizzoli and Abrams, on faculty at the Naropa University summer writing program since 2011, published through various imprints, worked collaboratively with Yoko Ono, Merce Cunningham, Cecil Taylor, Rhys Chatham, Lydia Lunch, John Zorn, Takehisa Kosugi and Glenn Branca, composed music for films by Olivier Assayas, Gus Van Sant, and Allison Anders, records and tours both solo, with various ensembles and with his own band, resides everywhere.
Mastered by Lasse Marhaug for Southern Lord.

Tape

It might be easy to assume that the distinctly focused compositional voice unveiled on Rose Bolton's The Lost Clock is the product of its creator's rigorous, almost hermetic dedication to her own particular aesthetic universe. A quick survey of Bolton's artistic career, however, reveals that her carefully sculpted approach to abstract electronica has been forged through a longstanding engagement with a wide range of intertwining creative activities.

This album—coming out on Important Records' cassette imprint, Cassauna—demonstrates both the Toronto-based composer's unique mastery of colour and her gift for breathing a tactile, organic quality into synthetic landscapes. Bolton's distinctive sensibility is akin to that of a painter—every hue has been carefully mixed so as to imbue its accompanying gesture with its own life and personality. This tangible dimensionality her electronic work assumes, however, can be traced back to the work Bolton has been doing since the 1990's. She has produced a large and varied catalogue of work that includes pieces for solo performers, chamber ensembles, orchestra, electronics, voice, and to accompany installations and films. A number of her works reside in several of these zones simultaneously, such as Song of Extinction, an ambitious collaboration between herself, filmmaker Marc de Guerre, poet Don McKay, and multiple live ensembles, that was mounted in an abandoned power station for Toronto's Luminato Festival.

This quasi-instrumental vitality isn't the only feature of The Lost Clock that reflects Bolton's diverse artistic practice. It can also be heard within the structural realm. Each of the collection's four tracks trace a patient unfolding and favour a certain roundness of timbre, even as finer details begin to fidget along the perimeter of the music. As with her writing for the concert hall, Bolton doesn't shy away from the evocative here, yet she doesn't pursue this poignancy through conventional, direct or quasi-narrative means. Her compositions lead the listener gradually through their impressionistic sonic scenery, but neither the path they take nor their ultimate destination are at all predictable. The ostensible gentleness each piece exudes dissolves as dissonances slowly insinuate themselves, obscure textures writhe just out of earshot, percussive lattice work materializes, or as the overall blend begins to exert a heavier weight. Her lucid-dream vision of form functions in tandem with her acute micro-level attentiveness to engender a vivid and elusive soundworld that resists classification.

Over more than two decades Rose Bolton has been garnering acclaim and enthusiasm from audiences and major collaborators alike. Last year, her brooding string quartet The Coming Of Sobs was nominated for Classical Composition of the Year at the JUNO Awards, following earlier accolades such as SOCAN Awards for Young Composers, and the Canadian Music Centre's Norman Burgess Fund. Her music has been commissioned by the likes of the CBC, stalwart experimental music festival the Sound Symposium, as well as key interpreters and ensembles such as percussionist David Schotzko, accordionist Joseph Petric the Esprit Orchestra, Continuum, Arraymusic, the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, and guitar quartet Instruments of Happiness (led by Tim Brady). Together with Marc de Guerre, she produced an 8-speaker sound and video installation for Toronto's Nuit Blanche Festival. She's also been featured by the likes of revered pianist Eve Egoyan, The Vancouver Symphony, L'ensemble contemporain de Montréal, The Music Gallery, and AKOUSMA, while appearing in concert alongside the likes of Jerusalem in My Heart (Constellation Records), Tanya Tagaq, and Francis Dhomont. Bolton is also a respected film composer, notably contributing music to the highly regarded documentary Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (co-directed by Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier and Edward Burtynsky).

As a performer, she variously employs electronics, violin, and viola. Parallel to her engagement with exploratory approaches, she's invested in the fiddle traditions of the British Isles, and various Canadian regions. She teaches this repertoire at the Royal Conservatory of Music. Bolton has also performed with Rhys Chatham, Owen Pallett, opened for Charlemagne Palestine, and appears on recordings by the likes of Chatham and Aidan Baker. In 1999 she joined the Canadian Electronic Ensemble, whose fifty-years together make them the world's longest-running live-electronic music group. In February 2020, the CEE held a residency and provided guest lectures at Carnegie Mellon University's music department. Bolton has also led workshops at the Banff Centre, also founded the SOCAN/ Moog Audio-sponsored program EQ: Women in Electronic Music, which worked to foster community and mentorship among (trans/cis) women and non-binary individuals.

Purple Vinyl

Even if you're well-acquainted with composer and multi-instrumentalist Colin Fisher's richly varied output, his gentle fifth solo album, Refections of the Invisible World may come as a surprise. Psychedelic lyricism has always been a fundamental aspect of his sonic signature, but his second collaboration with producer Jeremy Greenspan (Junior Boys, Jessy Lanza, Morgan Geist) finds the Toronto native luxuriating in expansive atmospherics for its full duration.
That's not to downplay the eclecticism he finds within this ethereal landscape. Each track tills its own discrete sonic acreage, and while every one emanates from a clear focal point, the spontaneous impulse that drives Fisher's more audibly improvisational music always remains close at hand. Some pieces unfold rippling aquatic vistas or delight in prismatic guitar arpeggiation, elsewhere his plaintive, blues- infected tenor saxophone wafts like some strange jazz apparition, or becomes a chorus of cosmic murmurs. The presence of electronics is undeniable, but equally irrefutable is the organic instrumental sources of these disparate hues. In fact he's discovered a rare balance: no matter how effects-saturated, every gesture on the record feels palpably sculpted by Fisher's hands and breath. As such, Refections of the Invisible World carries a sense of intimacy at the heart of its diffuse, dream-like sonics.
Fisher has a been a major presence in Canada's music community for more than twenty years—particularly in more experimental and improvisational circles. Nothing short of a guitar virtuoso, he also wields saxophone, drums, and various other instruments with similarly refined musicality, vivid textural imagination, and sometimes feral abandon. His one-man-band tape Garden of Unknowning for Manchester's Tombed Visions, showcase all of this as he spars with different iterations of himself. The Quietus' cassette critic Tristan Bath extolled it as "miraculous," adding that "it’s a visceral experience soaking up this record, and it’s all down to Fisher’s utterly innate sense of musicality." He subsequently cited it in his 2018 contributor's year-end chart for the Wire.
In 2014 his partnership with Nick Millevoi's trio Many Arms on Suspended Defnition (Tzadik) prompted Spin's Brad Cohan to remark "Many Arms have dug even deeper into math-metal wizardry, bolstering their already imposing lineup with gale-force blowing guest saxophonist Colin Fisher, thus blasting their outré sonic blitz into a fire-breathing free jazz otherworld." Fisher later engaged the band's bassist, Johnny DeBlase, to team up with him and Kid Millions (Oneida, Man Forever) as Monas. As an ongoing collaborator to introspective dance music auteur Caribou, Fisher frst appeared in offshoot project Caribou Vibration Ensemble, and subsequently on acclaimed albums Swim and Suddenly. He's also made two duo albums with celebrated Nova Scotian jaw harp innovator chik white for Dylan and Lisa Nyoukis' Chocolate Monk label. In addition to performing alongside the likes of Jaime Branch, Joe McPhee, William Parker, Laraaji, Gerry Hemmingway, and Fred Frith, he has contributed to recordings by the Constantines (Sub Pop), Bernice (Arts & Crafts), Rhys Chatham (Table of the Elements), Born Ruffans (Warp), Anthony Braxton and AIMToronto Orchestra (Spool), and many more.

Jac Berrocal, David Fenech and Vincent Epplay return with Ice Exposure, their second album for Blackest Ever Black. A sequel and companion piece of sorts to 2015's Antigravity, its title couldn't be more apt: sonically it is both colder, and more exposed - in the sense of rawer, more volatile, more vulnerable - than its predecessor, capturing the combustible energy and barely suppressed violence of the trio's celebrated live performances with aspects of noir jazz, musique concrète, no wave art-rock, sound poetry and spectral electronics all interpenetrating in unpredictable and exhilarating ways. While there are moments of great sensitivity and even a cautious romanticism, the prevailing mood is one of anxiety, paranoia, and mounting psychodrama: close your eyes and Ice Exposure feels like a dissociative Hörspiel broadcasting from the seedy backstreets of your own troubled mind. Before he picks up an instrument or opens his mouth, Berrocal's unique and compelling presence can be felt: a combination of studied, glacial cool and anarchic, in-the-moment intensity that has served him well over a long and storied career. It was honed during his time as a theatre and film actor, and in the 70s Paris improv scene, it powered his influential Catalogue group in the 1970s, numerous seminal, sui generis solo sides, and far-sighted collaborations with the likes of Nurse With Wound, Lol Coxhill, Pascal Comelade and James Chance which have seen him come to be valorised by two generations of avant-garde agitators and eccentrics. Now in his eighth decade, it comes with an added gravitas, perhaps, but no less energy or vitality. On Ice Exposure, his lyrical, instantly recognisable trumpet playing is a key feature - see especially the ghostly, dubwise take on Ornette's 'Lonely Woman', the dissolute exotica of 'Salta Girls', and the sublime echo-chamber soliloquy 'Opportunity'. But more often it's his voice that commands centre-stage, whether casually discharging surreal poetic monologues or moaning in animal despair - a vocal tour de force that transcends language and culminates in the Dionysian frenzy of 'Why', Berrocal's half-spoken, half-howled exclamations jostling with David Fenech's slashes of dissonant guitar, over Badalamenti-ish, panther-stalk drums. Fenech's origins are in the mail-art scene of the early '90s, when he led the Peu Importe collective in Grenoble, and since then, in addition to his own recordings he has worked as a software developer at IRCAM and played with Jad Fair, Rhys Chatham and many others. Together with Vincent Epplay he is responsible for Ice Exposure's inspired arrangements and vivid, vertiginous sound design. Epplay is a visual artist and composer with particular interest in aleatory composition, concrete, and the reappropriation of vintage sound and film material. He and Fenech fashion a remarkable mise-en-scene for Berrocal to inhabit, one that embraces cutting-edge electronics while also paying homage to the best traditions of outlaw jazz and libidinous rock'n'roll ('Soundcheck' invokes the brutish spirit of Berrocal's hero Vince 'Rock N Roll Station' Taylor). On 'Blanche de Blanc', Berrocal's voice is framed by a groaning, ghoulish orchestra of industrial drones, while 'Equivoque' evokes the most humid and hostile Fourth World landscapes and 'Panic In Surabaya' lives up to its name, a hectic, pulse-quickening concrète collage that leaves you gasping for air. This is a searching and singular trio operating at the absolute peak of their powers, with an interplay that transcends studio and stage and occurs at an almost telepathic level. Ice Exposure is a triumph of that group mind, an underworld dérive as life-affirming as it is unnerving and psychologically precarious.













Panic In Surabaya

Ltd. edition of 500 numbered copies on clear vinylGnashing, thrashing and teeming with enchanting microtones - Machine Guitars is the definitive recorded work of Remko Scha, although the late Dutch artist didn't play a single note himself. Rather, Scha arranged a motorized, rotating wire brush and saber saw in front of suspended electric guitars and let these metallic torrents flow.Scha was a linguist and generative artist, enamored of computers' capacity for algorithmic creativity. A leading researcher at the University of Amsterdam, he also cofounded the famed arts-space Het Apollohuis in a former cigar-factory in 1980. This haven for intellectuals and underground autodidacts served as the recording studio for most of Machine Guitars (as well as Ellen Fullman's brilliant The Long String Instrument), which originally appeared in 1982 on the small Dutch label Kremlin. Machine Guitars, as the critic Byron Coley has noted, ranks among the best of the era's minimalist-inspired, avant-garde guitar statements by Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham. The semiautonomous sound-making sculptures also evoke contemporaneous work by Christian Marclay. Scha's work falls somewhere between conceptual art and avant-garde music - a total revelation for minimalists and No Wave fans alike.First-time vinyl reissue. Limited edition of 500 numbered copies on clear vinyl.