A pair of guitar duos: Joe Morris & Elliott Sharp/Eyal Maoz & Eugene Chadbourne

     Two of modern music’s most outré guitarists, Joe Morris & Elliott Sharp, unite for an absolutely wild session they’ve dubbed Realism. Now this collaboration, involving acoustic guitars and electric guitars plus Morris’ effect pedals and Sharp’s electronics, is nearly as far from realism as you can get. I say “nearly” because the instruments are usually recognizable as guitars. Noisy, scrabbly, and definitively weird, their abrasive sounds will certainly not be to everyone’s taste. But so what? As producer and current ESP honcho Steve Holtje reminds us, one of the early slogans of the label was “you never heard such sounds in your life,” and that’s certainly true of this set. Totally improvised, and chock-full of surprising moments, this music twists and turns in so many directions at once it can feel somewhat dizzying. From the first fairly gentle flurries of sound on Shapes Mentioned to the whoops and clangs of the lengthy Arrokoth, Realism is both insanely beautiful and beautifully insane. Totally recommended.

 ESP-Disk’ ESP5084; Joe Morris (g, effects) Elliott Sharp (g, electronics); Brooklyn, NY, July 17, 2023; Shapes Mentioned/ Neither Odd Nor Even/ Light Asking/ Freezing in Hell/ Soft Version/ Arrokoth; 64:40. espdisk.com

    Another guitar duo, Eyal Maoz & Eugene Chadbourne, has a big batch of fun on The Coincidence Masters. Freely improvised music needs surprising coincidences to result in more than a random jumble of noise, and veteran weirdo Dr. Chad along with Maoz are more than ready to create the right conditions for those surprises to erupt. Where the Morris/Sharp duo is prone to big noises with lots of electronic effects, Maoz and Chadbourne take a calmer approach to their interactions. Chadbourne’s many projects over the years have nearly always had a humorous edge to them, and The Coincidence Masters is no exception. It comes through in the quietly subversive back and forth that the pair engages in, as well as the titles they’ve given for their improvised encounters. Song titles like And Now, All Is Left Is The Titles Search and The Last Track point directly at their playful attitudes in the recording studio. But in the end, They are no less serious about their music than the more raucous Morris/Sharp duo. Listened all the way through, the CD feels like a kind of suite, with track times running from the thirty-eight seconds of Eager for the Ad-Lib to a pair of lengthy excursions in Unexpected, Also For Us, clocking in at just over ten minutes, and the longer Naming Comforts People. The Coincidence Masters is a delightfully entertaining showcase of improvisation, mastered by none other than Elliott Sharp! 

Infrequent Seams (CD, digital album); Eyal Maoz, Eugene Chadbourne (guitars); NYC, June 10, 2022; Words Are Not Intended/ Two Guitarists/ Improvisation Enthusiasm/ On-the-Spot/ Eager for the Ad-Lib/ Unexpected, Also For Us/ And Now, All Is Left Is The Titles Search/ We Need It/ Naming Comforts People/ All Through / The Last Track; 52:05 . infrequentseams.bandcamp.com

Chris Cochrane & Stuart Popejoy: Geologic Time

In the mood for some minimalist psychedelic drones? Then Geologic Time by the guitar/bass duo of Chris Cochrane & Stuart Popejoy is just what the doctor ordered. This is certainly not your father’s psychedelia. Starting with their live improvisations, the pair applied all sorts of electronic post-production. Together, the noise quotient and the continually varied swell of Eemian hit the sweet spot of unfettered electronic improvisation, with the resulting sound somewhere between the roar of a jet engine and uncontrolled feedback. I’m hooked. While Tractored Out offers more of a give and take between Cochrane and Popejoy instead of the undifferentiated mass of Eemian, the effect is similarly unsettling. When Date Night With the Kids continually threatens to spiral out of control, the basic stuttering pulse underneath it all just manages to holds things together. The title track, at just over ten minutes, is the longest piece of the six tracks. This varied series of groans, shrieks, whoops and burbles lies atop a bed of dark, sludgy drones, creating a brutal and uncompromising soundscape. The relatively brief Aesthete’s Foot hinges on a back forth movement between two notes, shaped by variations in intensity and attack. What To Do closes the set with an urgent blast of sound that comes close to bursting apart before fading back into silence. Played loud, Geologic Time is a good way to clear out a party; listened to on headphones, it’ll give your head a real scrubbing. Either way, this is one release that won’t be ignored.
Infrequent Seams (digital release); Chris Cochrane (g) Stuart Popejoy (b); prob. Brooklyn, NY, no dates specified; Eemian/ Tractored Out/ Date Night With the Kids/ Geologic Time/ Aesthete's Foot/ What To Do; 36:24. infrequentseams.com