Various Artists: Spectra—Guitar in the 21st Century

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Spectra: Guitar in the 21st Century
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As a bit of enigmatic guitar music complied and released by Quiet Design, Spectra: Guitar in the 21st Century understands what a compilation should be. It does not attempt—nor should it, nor could it—to be a comprehensive overview of all guitar-based activity in the first nine years of the new century; instead, it explores the guitar as a timbral instrument, from finger-picked acoustic to synthed-out electric. Minimalistic gestures and drones abound throughout. The pieces included on the disc complement each other and often answer questions raised by the disc’s other tracks (observe the contrasting paths of electronic manipulation in SIX and Fermion that proceed from similar structures of tonal repetition), yet each piece still has a considerable amount of depth on its own.

The listener is conditioned for this heightened sensitivity right off the bat with the opening track, Three Small Pieces by Japanese musician Tetuzi Akiyama. The decisive rhythmic gestures are completely distinct, and mirrored by Akiyama’s own breathing to the point where one must think that it, too, is a carefully considered compositional element.

Austin-based composer Mike Vernusky’s Nylah is a seamlessly shifting sheen, accompanied with rumblings and small percussive artifacts. Further explanation might defeat the purpose of its mellow flowing, given that the sounds are so dismantling. The shift in tone is hypnotic. The only option is to stop and stare as the textures wash over you, showing an intense command of time through larger-cycle periodic motions. It’s analogous to hearing a tamed (not so jarring) lawnmower move away from you and then towards you over and over again.

In Music for Microtonal Guitars and Mallets, New York City’s Duane Pitre wrenches beautiful sounds from the instruments, shaping and capturing timbral delicacies—though perhaps not through delicate means. The opening section introduces a provoking pair of intervals, eclipsed by wild beating in their upper harmonic registers. It is always astonishing to remember how many interesting psychoacoustic phenomena can be accessed simply through instrument amplification. This harmonic play continues as the guitar’s sound is beaten and smoothed into a steady flow of feedback and resonance.

Cory Allen, another Austonian, continues down this road of sustained tone with Fermion, but he develops parallel layers that are significantly more jagged. It is not too farfetched to imagine Allen seeing the vibrating guitar string as the acoustic form of a tone generator. Set out on a table in a laboratory, it becomes the subject of careful dissections and manipulations. Sibilance is found and looped. Sustain is contorted into a tonal sequence. In reality, Allen probably was not actually so physically distanced from his guitar. He still seems to maintain a closeness with his instrument, yet his style of processing is so impressive in that it requires the composer to be a very astute listener; an observer of his own materials. Allen, through his electronics, finds the grains of guitar timbre and uses these fragments as his microelements.

Jandek’s The World Stops is surprisingly pleasant, given the notorious Houston artist’s reputation. What may at first be heard as queasy microtonality is actually eased by Jandek’s wandering vocal melodies. As his voice lilts slowly upward and downward, a psychic heaviness is created and then lifted. The vocal glissandi traverse a range of pitches in such a way that they seem to be tonally acceptable no matter the starting or ending pitch. His musical elements—cleverly haphazard tuning and defiant vocals, along with a few harmonica runs that he seems unconcerned with tactfully fitting into the mix—are aggregated to create an oddly powerful form of blues that verges on stadium rock psychedelia. He proves once again to be a defiant musician who shows that experimental forms can indeed be at least as emotionally potent as their formulaically crafted pop counterparts.

The tracks by Sebastien Roux & Kim Myhr, Erdem Helvacioglu, and Keith Rowe are also a worthy time investment. In fact, all of the tracks on this disc are rather pleasant on a basic level, but it may take multiple sittings to build up the stamina needed to endure and decipher their ideological density.