The Middle Of Everywhere: Guitar Solos Vol. 1 (AGS)
Various Artists
Released July 24, 2024
DownBeat Four-and-a-Half-Star Review
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kbo-yrowd75YCt9AThwxreKu-73_FvgsY
Spotify:
About:
The idea for this project started when Alternative Guitar Summit founder Joel Harrison presented a concert of virtual solo performances from around the world during the pandemic. Struck by the fantastic variety of people’s work he decided to produce a CD as a way of documenting these and other brilliant artists. Playing solo is a formidable challenge—it’s fascinating to see the different approaches the players take. Each performance is wonderfully different from the rest. There are wild whaps and thrums from Nels Cline, artful classical design from Fareed Haque, mysterious and enveloping electronics from Nguyen Le, a lovely baritone mood piece from Kurt Rosenwinkel, gorgeous, soulful melody and harmony from Camila Meza, overdriven walls of sound from Anthony Pirog, virtuosic fretless raga from Anupam Shobhakar, and on.
You never know what will come next, and yet it all fits as one statement. Lush chords and blasts of noise, tonal and atonal, ambient and highly structured sit side by side. Says Harrison, “All these players are colleagues and friends. They’re part of the extended family of the guitar summit. Each has a strong voice and profound dedication to their craft. It’s an honor to gather them all under one roof.”
And the title? Harrison describes it as “a phrase that conjures an image befitting solo performance: one is alone, solitary, no immediate feedback from a band. And yet—the creator is everywhere in his or her imagination, with infinite potential, no boundaries.”
Track Listing:
1. Seven Loves feat. Fareed Haque 03:27
2. Nox feat. Nguyên Lê 06:10
3. Slab Separations II feat. Nels Cline 04:33
4. Siete Ocho feat. Liberty Ellman 05:53
5. Rag Hemant Alap feat. Anupam Shobhakar 08:27
6. Transmutación feat. Camila Meza 05:05
7. Philly Minions feat. Kurt Rosenwinkel 05:03
8. Desire Waltz feat. Anthony Pirog 03:53
9. Genzlinger feat. Cecil Alexander 03:32
10. Memory Palace feat. Miles Okazaki 06:57
11. Summit of Ice feat. Henry Kaiser 06:03
Personnel:
Fareed Haque, Nguyen Le, Nels Cline, Liberty Ellman, Anupam Shobhakar, Camila Meza, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Anthony Pirog, Cecil Alexander, Miles Okazaki, Henry Kaiser: guitars
Review:
You can make an electric guitar sound like anything on Earth. That’s the first and biggest takeaway from this 11-track compilation featuring some of the world’s most interesting and adventurous guitarists, and a few others besides. Nels Cline’s “Slab Separations II” begins with chords that sound like someone playing the inside of a grand piano with a meat tenderizer, then feeds high-speed post-Frisell runs through a wall of effects, bringing to mind 1960s compositions by Xenakis or Stockhausen. Anthony Pirog’s “Desire Waltz” is more conventionally beautiful, with gently plucked figures shimmering to the surface of a lake of reverb and subtle drones, before shifting into an almost doom-metal zone. Henry Kaiser’s disc-closing “Summit Of Ice” turns pinging notes and looped figures into electronic burbles and zaps, bouncing around like an attempted self-remix has roused a dark spirit within the computer that is now warping the music for its own entertainment. Anupam Shobhakar’s “Raag Hemant Alap” combines long, psychedelically stretched notes with traditional Indian figures as a background, but his best trick is bending the strings to make them sound like a warped tape unspooling. Players like Cecil Alexander, Liberty Ellman, Miles Okazaki and Kurt Rosenwinkel offer variations on a more conventional jazz guitar approach, while still registering as individual voices. Fareed Haque’s “Seven Loves” and Camila Meza’s “Transmutación” (the only track with vocals) are somewhat traditional in other ways. There’s something for every taste on this hour-long set.
Phil Freeman (DownBeat)
