CHRISTER FRIEDRIKSEN - Vit
Losen Record LOS-170-2
Christer Friedriksen: guitars; Kenneth Silden: keyboards; Jan Erik Pettersen: drum samples
Recorded Strandberg Studio, Norway, 25th and 26th June 2016
This is a very different type of solo guitar album. For a start, it sounds like a guitar ensemble but everything you hear (except for some accompaniment on tracks 4 and 6) is Friedriksen. Then, each track is recorded in a single take, with no overdubs. Recorded over three days, he builds the pieces through layered improvisation on guitar and loop pedal. To get the richness of sound he is playing, Friedriksen plays through three separate guitar amplifiers. This gives a richly satisfying listening experience, with guitar lines coming from different directions through your headphones. The short opening piece has the feel of a church organ ebbing and flowing as the simple theme develops. Each piece that follows has gradually building complexity as the guitar tracks are layered and developed. At times it is not easy to hear when a particular layer has been added, so cleverly does he work through the adding and removing of parts and the use of echo, delay and other effects on these. In places, it sounds as if he has set a very long delay and slowed down the lead track, to give a gentle throb below his lead, at others the backing sounds reversed or cut into short pulses. His soloing on top of the layered atmospherics has some trace of the rockier influences he showed on his previous outings, but the way that in which he works the loops and plays across these shows something far more original and of much greater depth.
The idea of playing layered guitars calls to mind Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint or some of the recordings by, say Bill Frisell, but Friedriksen is, to my ears, doing something here that is distinct from these. The way in which the sounds build and fade and the movement across the different channels as you listen really draw you into a complex but richly satisfying ambient soundscape. This is compelling music that is very difficult to pigeon-hole into a specific genre – but then, there is only good music and bad music; and this is most definitely good.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
Losen Record LOS-170-2
Christer Friedriksen: guitars; Kenneth Silden: keyboards; Jan Erik Pettersen: drum samples
Recorded Strandberg Studio, Norway, 25th and 26th June 2016
This is a very different type of solo guitar album. For a start, it sounds like a guitar ensemble but everything you hear (except for some accompaniment on tracks 4 and 6) is Friedriksen. Then, each track is recorded in a single take, with no overdubs. Recorded over three days, he builds the pieces through layered improvisation on guitar and loop pedal. To get the richness of sound he is playing, Friedriksen plays through three separate guitar amplifiers. This gives a richly satisfying listening experience, with guitar lines coming from different directions through your headphones. The short opening piece has the feel of a church organ ebbing and flowing as the simple theme develops. Each piece that follows has gradually building complexity as the guitar tracks are layered and developed. At times it is not easy to hear when a particular layer has been added, so cleverly does he work through the adding and removing of parts and the use of echo, delay and other effects on these. In places, it sounds as if he has set a very long delay and slowed down the lead track, to give a gentle throb below his lead, at others the backing sounds reversed or cut into short pulses. His soloing on top of the layered atmospherics has some trace of the rockier influences he showed on his previous outings, but the way that in which he works the loops and plays across these shows something far more original and of much greater depth.
The idea of playing layered guitars calls to mind Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint or some of the recordings by, say Bill Frisell, but Friedriksen is, to my ears, doing something here that is distinct from these. The way in which the sounds build and fade and the movement across the different channels as you listen really draw you into a complex but richly satisfying ambient soundscape. This is compelling music that is very difficult to pigeon-hole into a specific genre – but then, there is only good music and bad music; and this is most definitely good.
Reviewed by Chris Baber
