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viewing 1 To 7 of 7 items
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OM 069LP
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"Solo Guitar 2 was recorded by Bill Nace in 2008, in a good-sounding room in Bennington, Vermont. This year the record, originally released as a now (nearly) extinct cassette, is reissued without it's mysterious and (maybe?) long-lost sibling Solo Guitar 1 (Like any good punk demo -- which, both aesthetically and energetically, Solo Guitar 2 is -- the thrill of discovery is made only sweeter by the potential of future discovery). The vinyl release comes a little less than a year after Bill's first 'official' solo record, BOTH, which was released by Drag City in May, 2020. The two records don't necessarily stand in opposition, but they are at different points on the spectrum of production, tone, mood, time, place, age, career. Where BOTH is softened by the warmth and precision of a studio, there's a wildness to Solo Guitar 2 which approaches the experience of witnessing Bill perform live. Made up of mostly brief pieces -- songs, practically -- Solo Guitar 2 winds tight, then unwinds, or sometimes snaps apart. Crackling, itchy static morphs into heavy, watery vibration, layered on metallic rattle. There are moments where that Bennington room sounds as sterile and lonely as a deserted art gallery. And then it becomes spacious and warm, like a cathedral filling with the hum of the universe. The bulk of Bill's releases are collaborations with other artists, who are drawn to him (at least in part) because he's an innovative player and a deep listener. Those qualities hold, and in certain ways intensify when he's on his own. As he takes a series of unlikely tools across his prone guitar with the grace and urgency of someone at a loom or an aircraft control panel, there's a sense of reaching inward. But where some might meander or navel-gaze, Bill's playing is a process of constant dynamic construction. What unfurls can feel intensely personal, and often -- for reasons I don't always understand -- very moving. Bill isn't interested in micromanaging his listeners' experiences, but he does make room for us. Composer Pauline Oliveros observed that when we listen deeply to the world around us, we sometimes notice very subtle and quiet differences in sounds that we thought were familiar. As a result, she writes, 'the slightest difference may lead you to a new creative relationship.' Bill is, I think, tuned in to these subtle and quiet differences. But, in a truly punk fashion, he flips this for the listener, making unfamiliar and not-very-subtle noise into something akin to (but also distinct from) familiar sounds: traffic outside your window, the soft roar of a conch shell to your ear, static between radio stations. Solo Guitar 2, full as it is of shades and moods and life, offers a fresh way of hearing." --Margaret Welsh Philadelphia, PA 2021
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OM 059LP
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"OM59/Live at #6. Numbered edition of 200. Silkscreened covers by Alan Sherry. Personnel: Susan Alcorn - pedal steel; Chris Corsano - drums; Bill Nace - guitar. Recorded September 5. 2018 live at Rotunda Philadelphia, PA."
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OM 056LP
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"'I was first introduced to the concept of Mark Charles Morgan by Thurston Moore in a series of conversations that all went something like this: TM: Dude, Sightings is coming to town. You should check them out. I think you'd really dig them. And you'd love Mark; he's hilarious Me: un-huh TM: No, really. Me: When and Where? I'll try to make it. TM: They're playing Friday at... At which point, I'd nod politely, internally shutting down, or just walk away, while he was mid-sentence. This went on for approximately seven years. Until in 2012, I finally caught Sightings at the local American Legion hall. As I walked through the doors for the first time, the following checklist went through my head: Incredibly depressing venue: check A bar you can still smoke at because it's technically a private club: check. Rummy regulars at said bar with absolutely no interest in the music in the other room: check. Large open room with sparse crowd: check (I'm being generous if I estimate 20 people in attendance). 'Oh great,' I thought, 'Not technically a basement noise show but might as well be. At least there's a bar.' Then Sightings started. And much to my surprise, they were not some horrible and boring noise improv shit. Sightings had songs. Mark's guitar growled, and he snarled. Or maybe it was the other way around. No matter, I did DIG them. They were great! Which would all make them sleeping on the floor in my tv room significantly less awkward, thank god. The next morning, I could genuinely gush about how much I liked them, in between bouts of mercilessly making fun of how many pedals Mark used. Which all brings me to Mark 'Man Crush' Morgan's 2018 solo effort Department of Heraldry that you now hold in your hot little hands. To say I was a little leery of what was obviously some of that aforementioned 'noise improv shit' is an understatement. My heart sank when I spotted a ten minute 'composition'. Oh fuck, there are two of them. This was going to be a hard sell. Not to you necessarily, but to me. I'm not some slight of build guy with stooped shoulders, wearing a dirty beige Lightning Bolt t-shirt with a John Fahey record tucked under his arm. The thing is though is that Mark has always had this really great guitar sound, only partly courtesy of all those shitty pedals he insists on using. He's not coming at this from a Pharoah Sanders-worshipping, free jazz-loving, sensibility. Rather, I hear his home town, Detroit. The record is scuzzy, and raw-sounding, punctuated with moments of utter desolation. Moments build, only to collapse again. There are even funky grooves but, of course, they fall apart. It's fucking great. Dude, you should check it out!' --Julie Cafritz, August 2018"
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OM 057LP
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"'My first listen to these four extraordinary pieces by Chris Corsano, Bill Nace, and Steve Baczkowski was over a very rough ferry crossing from Cairnryan to Belfast. It's hard not to think of the ghosts of impossible crossings, victories, loses, harbors in such rough waters. Why would anyone venture out here? Finding something new or an overdue visit? Ending all of the wars? For me, for my first listen to Mystic Beings instantly cured all motion sickness. It was probably just the very welcome adrenalin shots from their performance, but all the crashing and pitching over the waves became a joy. I was braver from listening in. Sometimes they hovered like a three-headed beacon -- a soaring vision to follow out on the horizon. Sometimes they seemed pulled into action and attack. Detonations and radio calls. Sometimes the spines of their own instruments cried out on the power of their own cores, their bodies having been left elsewhere. They drifted apart like a search party, skies clouded over, a spreading landscape streaked with transparent layers over layers. Or they joined together in quiet and unsparing ceremony, the kind usually reserved passing back through the place by which you've entered. All the while there was no scratching or banging at hard enclosed corners. These three players created a world of open space and flexible membrane, where any violence would only come from an outside imposition. Each of the songs read like movements in a larger work. As an eavesdropper, I added my own abstract, personal story over the whole album. I could repopulate new stories over and over again over this framework. The arc is that strong, and the conversation is that good. And even if just overheard, Mystic Beings generously called me out to where I needed to be. The shallows and the shores are where the worst dangers can find us, and our best chance of survival is sometimes out in the rolling depths. Deafen out the sirens and stay onward in the deep waters. Thank you, Bill and Chris and Steve, for sharing this kind of wild captain's safety with us.' --Meg Baird, Cairnryan and San Francisco, Nov 2018"
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OM 055LP
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"Cover art Bill Nace. Paste on covers screened by Alan Sherry. Mastered by Mark Alan Miller. Recorded live by Tim Barnes. Twig Harper--electronics, voice. Bill Nace--electric guitar, voice. Edition of 150."
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OM 052LP
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"Gates And Variations rounds out a loose trilogy of records by Jake Meginsky for Open Mouth. Not an intended trilogy on Jakes part but it has become one to my mind. It has come to be how I listen to them and experience them, all informing each other, echoing and challenging each other and growing into each other's space and light like a garden of plants that would never actually coexist anywhere in reality. Jake is always tirelessly reaching for something new yet I'd avoid using the word progression here. It instead feels to me like the last piece of a puzzle, or of a world created by some Jack Kirby demigod. Something has been completed and now all the pieces are interchangeable. The first can go last. The middle can be first. The whole thing becoming a universe looping in on itself with a multitude of entry points and not a lot of exits. These are dense environments where sections can move from microscopic to macroscopic, day to night and back again, so effortlessly that it's hard to tell if it's intended or if something imperceptible within you shifted the locus of your perception. But it is all very intentional, something carefully carved to give the feeling of something, though unfamiliar and strange, organic and grown. There's a sense of danger here like warning transmissions, concussive roiling rhythms and jagged disturbances. Yet also clear straight lines giving way to enveloping curve and staggering beauty. Supplant the beginning with the end with the beginning." --Bill Nace, Philadelphia, PA, September 2017.
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OM 048LP
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Restocked, last copies. "Fourth in Open Mouths's Live At ... series. Greg Kelley on trumpet; Bill Nace on electric guitar. Recorded March 9, 2016 by Daniel Menche. Cover art by Bill Nace. Covers screened by Alan Sherry. Edition of 300."
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