Improvised banjo album ranging from free jazz to avant-folk to full-on noise.

10 MP3 Songs
JAZZ: Free Jazz, ELECTRONIC: Experimental



Details:
From Sound Projector July 30, 2005
by Ed Pinsent

Interesting...an intellectual construct which proposes a kind of melding of traditional Old Timey / Bluegrass music with modernist electronic music. Chicago-based Woody Sullender adopts an appropriate name for said project and brings his banjo into a free improvisatory / art context, with occasional addition of live electronics to great effect. Eugene Chadbourne has done something similar with the banjo in his time, though always with a loopy knowing grin on his face, and was informed mostly by Bluegrass compared to this guy, who seems to have all sorts of other influences.

Laying out his wares on 'Commonwealth Edison', the musician shows straight away what a skilled picker he is; it's spiky music, delivered with many nifty 'choppy' effects on each strum. 'I Am In A Consumption' features guest cello playing from Fred Lonberg-Holm, another noted Chicago improviser; it's brilliantly stark, the crisp recording technique allowing each note to stand out and shine forth. Further effective banjo picking methods emerge; muffled strings, rubbed strings, percussive taps, upstrokes and downstrokes changing tack. By track 3, 'Sallie Goodman Breakdown', things start to get more weird as the live electronics come in. This track is almost all pure noise, but listen closely and the steel strings and melodies can be heard through the feedback - ghosts of old-fashioned dance music feeding in from the past. Great stuff. Track 5 also uses electronics - it's about distorting the normalcy of a familiar sound yet also letting tunes and rhythms leak out, despite the apparent chaos.

As title suggests, there's a generally pessimistic and gloomy 'fixin-to-die' tone hanging over this CD, and many of the chosen titles refer back to Old Timey music - 'Groundhog in the Courtyard' or 'Sallie Goodman Breakdown'. American intellectual Henry Flynt has also reinscribed bluegrass and breakdown music into an minimalist art context, but Uncle Woody Sullender does it through the channel of the solo improvising musician - and quite successfully too. On track 4, you could almost be hearing Derek Bailey on a banjo.

Carol Genetti adds vocals to 'Doute Tôt ou Tard', moaning and wailing in an abstracted way - playing Patty Waters to his Burton Greene. She doesn't sing a conventional song, even if he does play conventional chords; the unusual stop-start dynamics make this another winner. 'The Grain of the String' however, could be the real centrepiece of this record. The overall sound is amplified and distorted; the strings are being skinned alive, and hammered to death, by his remorseless picking and sliding actions. The recording drops out now and again, adding to the tension. A real slide-guitar death chant, to equal John Fahey. Maybe we need a UK equivalent of this interesting record - perhaps someone to perform improvised music on an instrument associated with our own folk music tradition, such as the hammered dulcimer or accordion. Recorded 2003-2004 at his Chicago home, in the studio, or in NYC; Jason Soliday (live electronics) also guests. A good one.