ELLIOTT SHARP – Err Guitar
Intakt Records: Intakt CD281
Elliott Sharp: guitar; Mary Halvorson: guirar: Marc Ribot: guitar
Recorded Studio zOaR, Manhattan, NY July 25th and 26th 2016
This CD is the result of two improvisation sessions involving Sharp and Halvorson (who I am most familiar with from her work in Ingrid Laubrock in Anti-Hause) or Ribot (who I know mainly from his playing with Tom Waits). There are also two ‘virtual’ trios (track 1 Blindspot’ and track 12 Kernel Panic’). In the first of these, Sharp and Ribot played, leaving space for Halvorson’s intervention to be added the following day. In the second, Sharp arranged a graphic score over a timeline which left space for the others to record independently against the clock. Together these, and the other pieces, encapsulate Sharp’s approach to improvised guitar playing which seeks to draw from the deepest well of traditions of guitar playing and push this into an unknowable future. As he puts it, ‘The contradiction is resolved in improvisation – the transcendent sonic path to the NOW’. Any improvised guitar CD would, I think for British readers, naturally call to mind the playing of Derek Bailey and it is interesting how much this recording doesn’t sound much like him at all.
There are moments of tense, skittering playing here and ways in which echo and other effects are used to create eerie sounds that don’t sound like they come from a guitar. However, the debt to blues playing and the intention to push the sound of guitar into new spaces creates a very different modus operandi. While it is not always easy to spot whether it is Sharp or Ribot or Halvorson playing, they bring with them individual phrases, sounds and fingering which points to individual styles. What is fascinating is the ways in which these styles shift across each piece, as the dialogue between guitarists allows them to share voices, as it were, and create mixtures of expression that comes from the duo (or trio) as the music unfolds. At times, the music carries an edge that comes from Flamenco playing (not just the strumming patterns but also the intensity of the emotion conveyed, particularly on track 7 and 8, ‘Sequola pt1’ and ‘Sequola pt2’), at other times, there is a blues-like progression of licks, and at other times the guitarist’s fingers run riot over the fret-board. This might sound too much like ‘difficult’ music. But that is to only see the structured pattern of notes as the defining feature. Yes, there are structures here (and these work with surprising eloquence). But equally importantly, there are the conversations between players, and these are emotional, honest, humorous and argumentative. It is like old friends (Ribot and Sharp have known each other for 20 years, Sharp and Halvorson for over 10 years) working very intensely to create their own language and then inviting us to listen in.
What continues to surprise me on each successive listen to these pieces is the ways in which the private languages they create end up having universal appeal and the ways that the track titles make sense of the music. So, the humour of ‘I’m gonna party like its 1988’ (track 6) or the plaintiveness of ‘The ship I’m on’ (track 2’). This might not be background music to relax to but it is music that is invigorating, challenging and ultimately liberating.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
Intakt Records: Intakt CD281
Elliott Sharp: guitar; Mary Halvorson: guirar: Marc Ribot: guitar
Recorded Studio zOaR, Manhattan, NY July 25th and 26th 2016
This CD is the result of two improvisation sessions involving Sharp and Halvorson (who I am most familiar with from her work in Ingrid Laubrock in Anti-Hause) or Ribot (who I know mainly from his playing with Tom Waits). There are also two ‘virtual’ trios (track 1 Blindspot’ and track 12 Kernel Panic’). In the first of these, Sharp and Ribot played, leaving space for Halvorson’s intervention to be added the following day. In the second, Sharp arranged a graphic score over a timeline which left space for the others to record independently against the clock. Together these, and the other pieces, encapsulate Sharp’s approach to improvised guitar playing which seeks to draw from the deepest well of traditions of guitar playing and push this into an unknowable future. As he puts it, ‘The contradiction is resolved in improvisation – the transcendent sonic path to the NOW’. Any improvised guitar CD would, I think for British readers, naturally call to mind the playing of Derek Bailey and it is interesting how much this recording doesn’t sound much like him at all.
There are moments of tense, skittering playing here and ways in which echo and other effects are used to create eerie sounds that don’t sound like they come from a guitar. However, the debt to blues playing and the intention to push the sound of guitar into new spaces creates a very different modus operandi. While it is not always easy to spot whether it is Sharp or Ribot or Halvorson playing, they bring with them individual phrases, sounds and fingering which points to individual styles. What is fascinating is the ways in which these styles shift across each piece, as the dialogue between guitarists allows them to share voices, as it were, and create mixtures of expression that comes from the duo (or trio) as the music unfolds. At times, the music carries an edge that comes from Flamenco playing (not just the strumming patterns but also the intensity of the emotion conveyed, particularly on track 7 and 8, ‘Sequola pt1’ and ‘Sequola pt2’), at other times, there is a blues-like progression of licks, and at other times the guitarist’s fingers run riot over the fret-board. This might sound too much like ‘difficult’ music. But that is to only see the structured pattern of notes as the defining feature. Yes, there are structures here (and these work with surprising eloquence). But equally importantly, there are the conversations between players, and these are emotional, honest, humorous and argumentative. It is like old friends (Ribot and Sharp have known each other for 20 years, Sharp and Halvorson for over 10 years) working very intensely to create their own language and then inviting us to listen in.
What continues to surprise me on each successive listen to these pieces is the ways in which the private languages they create end up having universal appeal and the ways that the track titles make sense of the music. So, the humour of ‘I’m gonna party like its 1988’ (track 6) or the plaintiveness of ‘The ship I’m on’ (track 2’). This might not be background music to relax to but it is music that is invigorating, challenging and ultimately liberating.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
