Christopher Riggs can't keep still, but it is to our benefit that the seemingly ADD-riddled guitarist produces output that makes even the most ambitious musicians and labels blush. Riggs returns with Gold Danny, another venture into perverted guitar noise from the current Michigan resident and former Oberlin Conservatory student.Don’t be fooled by Riggs’ collegiate pedigree—he is quick to veer far away from the traditional academic philosophy of creating complication compositions for art and beauty. Of course, there is the other side to the equation; music as a form of guttural art in the hands of musical geniuses with sheepskin degrees. Riggs roughly combines the opposite ends of the spectrum, producing a mountain of original output through his Holy Cheever Church label (which has found nine releases bearing his name this year; some of it distorted and awkward, some beautifully avant.
Gold Danny happens to be the first CD-R Riggs has released of his material this year, choosing to use the lo-fi sounds of cassette to house his creations. The slightly clearer sound emitted from the spinning disc puts a clearer spotlight on Riggs’ many talents. Gold Danny spans a host of electric guitar manipulations, rapidly changing from elastic string bends to monotonous bows. It’s the anonymity of Gold Danny, however, that is easiest to embrace. The 17 nameless tracks—rotating between 3-minute bursts of 6-string fury and 25 second silences—come across as ideas Riggs is sharing with listeners, as if to seek active feedback from his work. Despite being the product of spastic fits of creativity, Riggs has always worked well with others (as evident by his collaborations with Matt Endahl, Terrortank, and Mike Khoury among others) but this time we’re in the role of co-conspirator. Much like the Buddha box, Gold Danny feels like a tool to stir the creative juices of its audience and an eventual means to become part of a musical Frankenstein.
Christopher Riggs explores melody in abstract tones, often replacing any semblance of pattern for warped plucks and pounds of guitar strings. Much of Gold Danny plays like the plops and clicks from the “Seinfeld” theme, though the cute midi effects are replaced with twisted metal and chromatic springs. Each piece is a mini-deconstruction of the guitar in the truest form—as if Riggs has grown bored with a fully functioning instrument and is determined to pry open its electronic guts and document the process with the guitar’s death cries. Yet the intentions aren’t evil, and it translates into Riggs’ playful recordings.
Gold Danny may not be a conventional guitar album, but rarely does Christopher Riggs exist within convention. In the end, the guitar is just a prop and the treatment of it as such provides a new take on the instrument. This may not be a new way to coax strangeness from a guitar, but few can do it with this amount of effortless whimsy and cartoonish charm.
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