Disruption Theory outtakes

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Before I started tearing apart the ambient guitar paradigm, I was a devoted practitioner to that particular artform. Listening to this archival material from five years ago will help explain where the more confrontational and active approach I started cultivating in 2001 came from.

Every selection on this page has the following characteristics in common: it was completely improvised, it was done live, and it's a solo performance with a single guitar fed through electronic looping and processing gear.

Just about every piece here comes from a single day of recording, on March 2, 1997, and every sound, texture, and noise came from the tone of the electric guitar itself. (The sole exception is "This Is Not An Exit," which was recorded in October of the same year, and which features guitar synthesizer instead of "real" guitar).

Aside from some EQ adjustments and occasional fades at the beginnings and ends of the tracks, everything on these selections was done live, as the piece was being played and improvised. As a result, there are occasional moments of undesirable sonic and musical strangeness to be found amongst the more desirable ones. Exactly which ones are which is, of course, an open question...

For more information on this material, visit the Echoplex pages.

Azimuth
(17:44)
RealAudio Stream

This is a very "traditional guitar loop improv": it starts off sparse and fragile, like a symphony orchestra tuning up (it reminds me a bit of Debussy), and eventually grows into a massive, undulating wall of sound not unlike a cosmic pipe organ.

This Is Not An Exit
(7:22)
RealAudio Stream

An excerpt of a 40-minute live guitar synth performance I did at the infamous (and long since closed) L.A. restaurant Lumpy Gravy, on October 25, 1997. The clientelle were not entirely enamored of my music for the evening; I have a distinct memory of looking into the audience and seeing an elderly couple glaring at me, shaking their heads with expressions of pain on their faces, before walking out of the building.

This track fades in right after the couple left; from its initial agitated beginnings, it eventually settles into a cautious serenity. And thanks to electronic intereference from the stage lights in my pedal board, you can even hear what sounds for all the world like birds chirping at the very end.

In spite of the happy ending, this was my fourth and final stint at the venue; the proprietors of Lumpy Gravy chose not to book me again after this particular adventure in music-as-social-catalyst.

Inferno
(8:46)
RealAudio Stream

I used to have a line here describing this one as "A descent into the depths of Dantean hell." (I guess I still do, but at least now I've veiled it in the shroud of knowing irony.) It reminds me of 20th centuary composer Gyorgy Ligetti (whose work you might recognize as the very abstract and disturbing material from 2001: A Space Oddessey).

Some Assembly Required
(8:02)
RealAudio Stream

Robot cat takes spin in washing machine, sounds tornado alarm, ascends top of holy mountain, merges with Atman. Film at 11:00.

Dawn Over I-80
(9:29)
RealAudio Stream

A slowly-building, meditative track which for some reason reminds me of mid-70's Pink Floyd. Probably a good drug tune, but I assume no responsibility for any legal ramifications therein. The name was picked because it reminds me of the sun coming up over the horizon in the early morning, as I drove back to Iowa City one day in my angst-ridden teenage years (it's a long story).

Transgressor
(6:14)
RealAudio Stream

If Lou Reed's infamously unlistenable Metal Machine Music album was sent through a black hole, it would sound a lot like this. What we have here is basically abrasive, anti-social noise, and a lot of it.

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