Monday, March 18, 2024

Glen Weyant-Transmissions: New Work For Electric Guitar, Amplifier and Effects; Sonicanta Records, 2024

 

Preceded by a kind of preamble in the form of an email, Glen Weyant's most recent release is Transmissions: New Work For Electric Guitar, Amplifier and Effects. The listener is presented with just under an hour's duration of solo electric guitar explorations. These are not shred guitar sounds that Weyant pulls for the guitar/amp/effects combination. Nor are they simply textures, an accomplishment of the raw field recording technique that Weyant used for their capture. Ambient sounds such as a foot engaging a foot pedal are present. Also present are Glen's melodic ideas, his layering ideas, his shards of sound ideas, his controlled feedback ideas (is that a Fender Twin you're using dude?), his ideas of space versus density in the sound field, and so much more. Recordings such as Transmissions are generally excellent windows into the creative approaches of their makers, and it is no exception. Disaster Amnesiac would like to recommend that one start out with Transmissions Pt. 2, for Weyant pulls out sounds that are a touch more approachable within the standards of "normal music" (not that I can really clarify what that is or is not), but I feel that to be the case. Transmissions Pt. 1 is a bit more initially stunning for its pretty much immediate jump into the abstracted bliss zone that is so coveted by weirdos like me and probably thousands of others (in some ways a secret society with Grouch Marx tendencies). Dig in and drop out, your tax dollars are being wasted on bullshit anyway.

Friday, March 15, 2024

Live shot #110!

 

Saxon, Cornerstone Berkeley ca. 2018.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Random shot!

 

Butte, MT July 2020. A long running restaurant in a very mysterious town. It felt like an entirely different dimension in Butte. Go there and work on poetry.

Saturday, March 9, 2024

Mars Williams/Darin Gray/Chris Corsano-Elastic; Corbett vs. Dempsey Records, Mars Arhive #3, 2023

 

It must be admitted by Disaster Amnesiac that the only that I saw Mars Williams play, it was in Berkeley and that he was a member of the Psychedelic Furs. They were headlining over the Church, Mrs. Amnesiac's favorite band. She wasn't digging the volume that the Furs were playing at, and we had to split (my love happy that she got a nice house mix for the Church), but not before I got to hear what were pretty clearly to me Albert Ayler riffs from Mr. Williams. A very smiley moment, I must say. Mars Williams has left this dimension, but Corbett vs. Dempsey Records has been treating fans of Improvised Music to disc-long goods from his archive. Disaster Amnesiac has recently copped Elastic, featuring bassist Darin Gray and drummer Chris Corsano and Mars of course on reeds and toys. Starting off very powerfully on Set One 1 and then simmering down for the most part into some really Chicago-styled interactive motion, Elastic is a very compelling listen, top to bottom. Williams plays full out when he wants to, then by turns laying off a bit to let his two fellow sound explorers go into their areas of expertise. I mean, is that a trumpet or some extended technique that Chris has been developing? Does Darin have a drumstick wedged within his upright, thereby getting those really great percussive thwacks at times? This trio is drum tight and Elastic is an evidentiary document of seasoned, engaged players plying their knowledge in ways that are fun and listenable, at least for this human. How about you, assuming that you're still also human?

Another random shot!

 

South-central Montana, July 2020.

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Random shot!

 

Sabino Canyon, Tucson AZ November 2021.

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Live shot #109!

 

Pianist, composer, improvisor Eli Wallace. Berkeley Arts Festival Building, 2015. The set that this photo is from was in duet with percussionist Rob Pumpelly.