The Art of Prepared Guitar began as a brain-child almost ten years ago. I'd mentioned it to Tom Carter who said, tell me when it comes out: so I'm telling him and now you too. It was supposed to be an album wherein I'd try to recap all the extended techniques, show essentially what's in the mojo bag, & track back through moments when I remembered first taking my eyes off the frets, when I started to play purely through sound and timbre. Initially I thought I would name my mentors in homage but at my age all the influences have been blended, boiled back down or up into genetic plasma from which each playing session recombines all the traits or strands into a novel structure negotiating the playing experience. The titles bear witness to the irony of daring to make those definitions or attributions. I would say that this album however bridges a space between those psychedelic music moments of noise guitar (Syd, Jimi, Kath), no wave, free jazz noise like Sonny Sharock, then Derek Bailey and Keith Rowe -- players who probably would never have appeared on the stage together but who regularly haunt me while playing. My resultant discoveries via prepared guitar did not speak of a purely abstract space though. I did feel the guitar becoming more modular as Keith observed, as I applied micro-cassettes and radios over the pick-ups, I noted that altering the guitar in various ways also revealed traces of more aboriginal music, ethers and archeological bleed. In essence, I became more of a receiver and relayer of energies via the guitar, the guitar was a listening device. In attempting to move into the future of the guitar or the post-guitar (as in the case of Kevin Drumm or Annette Krebs where the guitar became deconstructed and/or displaced into other electro-acoustic processes, if you will), I also discovered aspects of earlier ethnic music, blues and tonalities that hinted at other mysteries of acoustic resonance ecologies, bugs and ghosts in the machinations. The guitars come and the guitars go. I think sometimes the mermaids are within ears reach. Thanks to Michael for hosting my havoc.
Recorded in March 2023.
Guitars: Ibanez (chrome blue), Hagstrom Viking, Höfner HCT-CS10.
Amps: Vox Mini, Hartke Bass and... preparations!
A limited amount of free download codes are available for those fallen upon hard economic times and/or for those who would like to review the album. Just ask me via email
