Review of E.A.D.G.B.E. [12k1025]

Vital Weekly (NL)

The guitar remains an instruments that appeals to a lot of musicians, and those who hooked to laptop, like the good old six strings aswell. It’s still a fine source to put into your laptop and let all sorts of manipulations go wild over them. 12k understands this, and has asked four composers for lenghty pieces (or more short pieces) of some guitar treatments. The CD opens with two very nice glitchy ambient pieces by Japanese Fonica, nice flowing, but staying a bit on the same safe side. Keith Fullerton Whitman, aka Hvratski, has already done some interesting guitar processed music for his Kranky release, but here he is great shape. A wonderfully tuned piece that is much like a musique concrete collage, in the best tradition of various artists normally on the Line label. Sébastian Roux might be less known, but he started out as a guitarist in various experimental-post rock ambient bands. That experience is taken a step further here and warm glitches are addressed to processed guitar sounds. Quite droney he gets a good results. The big surprise however is at the end: Christopher Willits had a CD before on 12k with processed guitar music, so this work here is no different (and may have brought 12k to the idea of putting out this compilation?). His work are seven short sketches for almost spanish acoustic guitar playing. Rhythmically and highly melodic with some skippy beat to guide it. Lushly played with a lighthearted touch. Simply great, relaxing music. Manual Gottsching trapped in hardware.

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