psychedelic experimental new weird bluegrass guitar and zither music

19 MP3 Songs
ROCK: Psychedelic, FOLK: Folk Blues



Details:
The return of Alan Sondheim!

A recording of solo acoustic guitar and alpine zither songs, this release will delight those familiar with his early Riverboat (reissued as FM 04) and ESP Disc recordings as well as the audience for experimental solo guitar - while creating an audience for experimental solo alpine zither! On this release, Alan performs on the 1927 martin tenor guitar, 19th century parlor guitar, 1920s prime alpine zither and 1860s elegie alpine zither.

Dan Wharburton of Paris Transatlantic said of the reissue of The Songs:

"an endearingly ramshackle melting pot of free jazz, blues and folk (if Eugene Chadbourne later described his work as "free improvised country & western bebop" then this is "free improvised Hawaiian flamenco gospel blues music theatre).. its influence resonates (indirectly, one imagines, unless there are more copies of the original vinyl in circulation than I imagine) in the free folk of today's New Weird America scene."

Now listeners have the opportunity to hear for themselves the present day song form manifestations of this overlooked creative master.


ON GUITAR BY ALAN SONDHEIM:

Guitar is all I can do. Everything else is talk, concept, ideation. Guitar is labor/energy. Guitar is skill. I wanted to be the fastest guitar player in the world. I learned the chords digital-style, sort [chord], a b c d e f g a7 b7 c7 etc. I practiced speed. I practiced speed all the time. The forms began to come. I slept through the harmony melody. I went after the forms. Nothing was too fast. I wanted more than twenty-two notes/second. I didn't want to cheat. I'd didn't want to cheat myself. I wanted it there, what my hands, wrist, fingers, were doing. I wanted to play faster than I could think. I wanted to trip over myself, catch up with myself. I caught up with myself. I added chords. I subtracted them. I did chords. Then music sped out of my control. I abjure myself. I forgive myself. I couldn't follow it. I couldn't do anything. It surrounded me. It held me in thrall. We didn't speak through each other. We didn't speak to each other. I played faster. I surprised myself. I kept surprising myself. I forgot theory. I forgot speech.


Previous Discography:

The Songs, Riverboat, LP, 1967 reissued 2005 Fire Museum Records
Ritual, ESP LP, 1968
T'Other Little Tune, ESP LP, 1969
Participant on ESP samplers 1969-70
Global Report, Damaged Life, Spasm cassette, 1986
Flesh, Damaged Life. Spasm cassette, 1987
Live at Starck Club 1987, Damaged Life cassette
Lips, Damaged Life cassette, 1987


Select Bibliography:

Hole, 1994
Immobilization, Fort-Da, Atlanta, 1993
Chatter Death, 1992
Poems and Stories, 1991
ETR, ocalocka, 1988
In the Third World, Tasmanian School of Art, 1982
Texts, U.C. Irvine Dept. of Art, 1978
The Structure of Reality, NSCAD, 1977
Analysis of Situation, 1972
Lists, Halifax, 1971