This compiles eight rather austere avant-garde guitar works from artists spanning the world (yet featuring a disproportionate number of Texans). Thankfully, one of those Texans is Jandek, who conspicuously counterbalances the somewhat academic sensibility of the album. Despite this aesthetic of high-art sterility, the album has a impressively high success rate.
Quiet Design
While the music represented on Spectra is often excellent, I am somewhat perplexed by the album’s focus and ambition. First of all, all of the artists included are quite similar in sound: only a very specific strain of 21st century guitar music is represented. Namely, guitarists who apply for art grants and describe themselves as composers (with some exceptions, obviously). Secondly, it seems bizarre and misguided to attempt a survey of contemporary experimental guitar without Fennesz, Peter Rehberg, Jim O’Rourke, Stephen O'Malley, Sonic Youth, etc. I demand a title change, Quiet Design. Perhaps Electro-acoustic Minimalism in the 21st Century?
That said, there are several rather exceptional tracks here (despite the absence of the aforementioned luminaries). “Six” (by Sebastian Roux and Kim Myrh) is a slow-building piece erected upon a foundation of wavering drone and plucked harmonics. Gradually, electronically manipulated scrapes, whines, and backwards noises are added until it coheres into a rusty lurching rhythm.
“Nylah” by Texan "surrealist studio sculptor" Mike Vernusky is an excellent drone piece that manages to simultaneously rumble and shimmer. The swelling washes of feedback are nicely complemented by dripping water, creaking, and a metallic industrial hum. This is quite expertly composed and produced stuff. Vernusky has an excellent feel for dynamics and texture. Austin’s Cory Allen also turns in a striking drone piece. “Fermion” begins with an unadorned low droning tone that slowly becomes enveloped in a buzzing and pulsing cloud of textured digitally processed sound and disintegrating washes of static.
Most of the other pieces on the album are chromatic, minimalist acoustic pieces (although Turkey’s Erdem Helvacioglu bucks the trend by occasionally adhering to conventional scales and melody). The notable exception is Keith Rowe’s (AMM) live rendition of Cornelius Cardew’s "Treatise", which sounds much closer to an ambient Merzbow than anything guitar-based. Eventually it winnows down to simple and recognizable feedback, but there is quite a bit of white noise, grinding, industrial roar and clatter, and possible powerdrill usage before that point.
The album closes with a Jandek track (“The World Stops”) that characteristically rides the line between genius and unintentional comedy. It is intriguing that the album's curators chose this particular track, as Jandek’s playing seems to consist solely of arrhythmic open string strumming on a standard-tuned guitar. However, it features some truly demonic atonal harmonica wailing that would make a nice centerpiece for a future Quiet Design survey of harmonica in the 21st century.
Samples:
