Guitar Week – Day 1 ~ The Free Jazz Collective

by Nick Ostrum

Guillaume Gargaud and Eero Savela – Syyspimee (Ramble Records, 2023)

I missed this one last year. However, it appears to have only appeared on Bandcamp this year, so I’ll be including it in this year’s Guitar Week.

Guillaume Gargaud is a French guitarist who, however

release

The late Burton Greene, who I covered for FreeJazzBlog a few years ago, has over 35 releases under his belt. Finnish trumpeter Eero Savela was previously unknown to me, but a quick internet search shows that he was quite active in live performances, particularly in various forms of dance, theater and even the circus. This is their second duo release, the first being released in 2020 Helsinki.

This music has a real lightness to it. The title, Syyspimee, is Finnish for “the darkness of autumn,” but it is a quiet darkness, a welcome extended twilight after an active summer. However, I hesitate to go much further down this sleepy line because the music is neither sleepy, unnerving nor boring. IT is just relaxed. Both musicians demonstrate a range of techniques, some conventional and others less conventional. But the volleys of sound, the tendrils of guitar and trumpet lines, the skill and vision behind the deceptive veil of simplicity make this piece something special. Gargaud presents an almost classical progression on his acoustic guitar, Savela responds with a series of smoky spirals. Gargaud responds with another slow lick and Savela with an excursion reminiscent of a smoky Miles or Chet Baker. If this relaxed serenity continues this fall, I’ll happily say goodbye to summer.

Syysipmeeis available on CD and download on Bandcamp.

Sinister Priest – Sleeping virtue (Halocline Trance, 2024)

Eldritch Priest, composer and guitarist who released the Infectious

Omphaloscepticism

two years ago is back with another solo work. This one,

Sleeping virtue

focuses less on catchy tunes and relies much more on layers of riffing and light feedback. There’s a fine line between noodling and this kind of performance, and that line seems to be one of intention and dedication to a motif and mood. The priest moves on the right side of this chasm.

Sleep virtue refers to the hypnogic properties of opium, which cause sleep to blur and hallucinations to occur. I’m not sure what this would sound like in an altered state, but it’s certainly fascinating. Each of its eight tracks takes the listener into its often fluid sound world. The guitar is measured and spacey, flickering like a fuzzy and distant star or blurring like a moon lightly covered by a blanket of clouds. The music sounds composed, if not on paper then at least in Priest’s head, but it doesn’t follow a regular pattern. And how with Omphaloscepticismthere are sections so rich (think Kraftwerk’s more uplifting moments) that they border on juicy delights.

Sleeping virtueis available on elegant vinyl and as a download from Bandcamp.

Eyal Maoz and Eugene Chadbourne – The chance masters
(Rare Seams, 2024)

Here’s another review of a guitar duo that doesn’t disappoint. Eugene Chadbourne is of course a freakabilly, radical country and free improvisation artist of the highest order. Eyal Maoz may have a smaller reputation, but that does not reflect his broad musical interests (rock, reggae, Jewish/Eastern European folk traditions, reggae, free jazz). [of course]) still from his game.

From the first notes of The chance masters,Chadbourne leans on the avant-garde of his unique syntax and Maoz holds his own. However, that sounds too combative. On each of these tracks, Maoz and Chadbourne seem to be in agreement, playing a combination of straightforward picking, amplified chords and piercing shreds. Much of it is comparatively relaxed, a jam on the porch just as the alien ship arrives. O, perhaps a dazed contemplation of the constellations, complete with strong associations about how ethereal and strange this process can be. (For those who care about this, I can’t shake the thought that this could be, even unconsciously or mistakenly, a meditation on the Flatlanders’ “The Stars in My Life,” albeit without groove and vocals and chopped up, processed, digested and distorted almostbeyond recognition.) Anyway, this example truly stands out for its skill and understated oddity. Go ahead, Eyal and Chad, and watch out for the tractor beams.

The chance masteris available as CD and download from Bandcamp.

Elliot Sharp, Sally Gates, Tashi Dorji – Ere guitar (Intact, 2024)

To paraphrase Ash Williams when confronted with a triad of Necronomica
Army of Darkness“Three guitars? Nobody said anything about three guitars? Like, what should I follow a guitar or all guitars or what?”

The second part of Elliot Sharp’s E(e)r(e) Guitar presents the listener with this puzzle. This time with Sally Gates and Tashi Dorji, the answer is, well, opaque. Ere guitaris a cauldron of electrical whirling, whirling and general electro-stirring cacophony. You almost immediately lose track of which guitarist is playing which line, as it all mixes together in the same pot. Patches and shards of atmospheric noise stream in and out of the background as one guitarist and then another steps in to shred or fire off a volley of clicks and clicks. Some parts, like the beginning of Survey the Damage – incidentally the longest part of the album – take on a darker mood and layer drones on feedback. But then the sound shocks appear, flinging back and forth and drilling into the dark surface of the sound. Then the striped shocks open up to finer moments of precise etching and, more often, duller moments of gouges and scratches and the chunky, repetitive click of an engine. I’m not sure what Ash would have thought of it, especially back in 1992 when the film came out, or given the generic medieval setting in which it took place. However, this would have at least been a fitting soundtrack to his journey through the time portal from one to the other. Simply great.

Ere guitar is available as CD or download from Bandcamp.