How much more Derek Bailey can you get? Do you play louder and faster, then turn to preparations and other devices to augment and navigate through his path's oeuvre?
London-born, second generation improvising guitarist John Russell (a former student of Bailey) made a choice to be a different type of innovator. In a 2009 interview with Eartrip magazine, he discusses this aesthetic:
"I think for us earlier on, the search for new sounds was part of it, but the nub was to find material that could prove useful to improvising. If you like: to find an essence or core to a way of playing music. I did try various things with the electric guitar (preparations, feedback etc. and always trying to avoid the 'I've got a new device' mentality) but I quite consciously moved to the acoustic instrument to get closer to what being a guitarist meant."
But unlike some who reject the next step, take five backwards and end up with a second-rate trope (i.e. Phillip Glass ignoring the then-current Webern and Boulez environment to spend his life in pursuit of an updated version of The Four Seasons), Russell binds himself to the idiosyncrasies of the instrument — those according to Russell, that is — ingests these self-imposed limits and pushes forward. Hyste is Russell on his vintage archtop acoustic, a microphone, the psi records acoustic space du jour in Whitstable's St. Peter's church with hands dug deep into the roots of the soundboard. He avoids modal noodling, obvious riffs, conspicuous harmonies and formal progression for a gentle 58-minute campaign of scrapes, wide intervallic dyads, staccato bursts, the occasional pensive resonating chord, rapid shaky strums, stark harmonic ringing, above the nut plucks and palm mutes — and copious sundry of all these techniques — without mechanical tricks to augment amplification or distract from the tender intimacy of man meets six string (Russell's cough 30 minutes in is as funny as it is shocking to the mood he seduced the listener into). At times the music veers toward Taku Sugimoto, specifically his ability to bleed intrigue from the minimal; other more elegant and labyrinthine gestures recall Tōru Takemitsu's Folios. And of course the ghost of Bailey is an inevitable influence.
While there are many musicians who successfully forge directions and cunning niches with the electronics-soaked and / or screws-jammed-into-frets routes (some of these write for The Squid's Ear!), Russell's focused, organic language is a rally for creativity though simplicity.
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