STOLEN LIGHT – UNPREPARED GUITAR

3″ CDr, https://innerdemonsrecords.bandcamp.com/

I don’t have to tell you about music being written for prepared piano or anything like that. The most influential composers ever did that, and so much has been written about that. So I’m skipping that introduction while I’m listening to pieces for ‘Unprepared Guitar’ by our friend Brett Lunceford from Stolen Light / Goose / Zaftig Because, in the same way, you can prepare an instrument and play something, you can also lice the moment and see what an unprepared instrument brings you, and manipulate it while you are doing the activities that you would have done otherwise to make it a prepared instrument … I mean, something like that …

We’re looking at the promo text: ‘The sound source is just as it says: a guitar with a lot of junk on it. No overdubs or processing other than a mixer. Equipment includes a First Act guitar with one broken string, paper clips, metal chain, scrap metal, back massager, and other junk.’ And with this set-up Brett recorded three tracks, two of which just got a number and a third one which got the meaningful title “Did You Even Use a Guitar on Those Tracks?” And I must admit, in those first two tracks, covering 20 minutes, you can not trace any guitar sound, while in the third one, it’s as if Brett plucks a few strings in combination with previously found sounds to say, ‘even though you don’t believe me, here’s the proof!’

Massive noise, not really a composition but a great thing to listen to and clean your ears.