nicemusic041
Nice Music 2021
https://nicemusiclabel.bandcamp.com/album/041-solo-guitar-i
This is my attempt to review an album that is worthy of multiple listenings—something that in my experience is quite rare. This of course, is a totally biased opinion, not because I know Alexander Garsden, or am particularly familiar with his other works, but rather, this album resonates deeply for reasons that I'm unlikely to articulate with words.
I even played this album to my dad—a rural-working-class-retiree-tradie-turned-hobbie-guitarist—and his response was, "this sounds like you!" Which of course, I thought was observant (and would be greatly flattering if it didn't come from a parent), considering I chose to review this album—which wasn’t included in the very long list options presented for the somewhat daunting task for a newbie reviewer. In any case, I was fortunate to have a chat with Alexander, who was very generous in sharing insights into his composition and performance process.
Roland Barthes once stated that "the true locus of writing is reading” and that “every text is written here and now.” Is the true locus of music in the listening-experiencing-feeling? At its best, creating music—particularly in live improvised performance—couldn't be more here and now. What about when a performer listens back to a recording and has a drastically different perception of the music? This was the case for Alexander Garsden during the creation of Solo Guitar I, which informed his approach to mapping out forms and rhythmic material, as a practice aid to guide the compositional process.
Garsden is a composer-guitarist with a wide palette for music-making. His work includes collaborations with a long list of musicians, ensembles, orchestras and electro-acoustic music. For someone who considers himself to be a “technically limited guitarist", this album displays a technical fluency, a deep sense of musicality, and a very clear trajectory. His inspirations include Robbie Basho, Chris Abrahams, La Monte Young and Derek Bailey—the presence of these influences can be felt throughout.
Garsden’s debut solo album Solo Guitar I, released in 2021 via Nice Music, will be the first of two solo albums, documenting his 10-year exploration of the steel-string guitar. Solo Guitar I consists of three distinct yet interrelated tracks—Voiles, Nine Ravens (Variations), and (A)WTG—which were composed with large time-spans in-between. The result is a broad yet cohesive suite of works where altered tunings, metric modulations, density through repetition, and raga-like approaches, each play an integral role in the work as a whole. Garsden's unusual tuning choices which includes just intonation, is part of his aim "to gain access to a greater level of chromatic density without having to restring the guitar." While the overarching forms and phrasings are highly composed, the surface layers and permutations are improvised, and vary with every given performance.
The opening track Voiles, is a solo version of a larger work that has been performed in as a trio with Erkki Veltheim on violin, and Rohan Drape on synthesiser. The trio has performed 3-hour, 40-minutes, 20-minutes and 10-minute versions of the piece and interestingly, the variable length directly affects the harmonic progression. The album version lasts just over 11 minutes in length. According to Garsden, Voiles was a very literal exploration into new ways of playing the guitar. The title alludes to Debussy's work of the same name, is (almost) tuned in fifths, and features dense entanglements of rapid right-hand arpeggiations, interspersed with harmonics and mix of chromatic, and pentatonic tuning.
Nine Ravens (Variations) provides some respite in terms of the pacing. Although a self-described "failure when it comes to melody writing," this piece is entirely built upon melody. Much less pointillistic than Bailey, this piece successfully weaves lyrical through-lines, drawing on idiomatic technical language, through Garsden’s own musical grammar. Written primarily on the couch while watching the North Melbourne football club play terribly, he considers this piece to be an important stepping-stone in the development of his solo voice. It is both the earliest, and most highly composed work on the album, having been written 10 years ago. Originally taking a longer form, Nine Ravens (Variations) came about when he made the decision to work with the steel string guitar without using any interrupting devices or preparations, instead, taking a more traditional approach to extended techniques, where "everything is very much about your hands being on the strings," working with, and not against, the instrument. The altered tunings in this track also feature throughout his album of duos from 2020, Of another.
While notions of trance are not Garsden's intention, (A)WTG seems to alter my state with every listen. Perhaps it's the non-conventional 11-limit tuning system, the spaciousness, the changes in tempo, or raga-like approach (and of course, all of the above) that is well worth spending the 21-minutes it takes to experience the piece in full. While rhythm is not the driving force in Garsden's thinking, (A)WTG—and the first two tracks—foreground a well-considered approach to rhythmic development, which takes place across the whole album.
Although each track is titled (I will leave it to the reader to decode the somewhat cryptically titled (A)WTG), Garsden considers his music to be nothing other than pitches, stating that he is "too gutless to just call everything Untitled." Who knows, maybe album two won't have any titles? (footnote: at the very least, I'm happy to see a composer capitalise their non-programmatic titles)
If you've read this far, I am very confident that you will like this album. It offers an accessible yet provocative approach to solo steel-string guitar composition and performance. As an added bonus, the production is superb, having been mixed by Garsden's contemporaries, Joe Talia and Anthony Pateras.
Published in November 2021 in Loudmouth, Music Trust Zine.