Slide guitar is as rootsy as it gets, but Carl Weingarten has taking the technique into realms that would astonish Elmore James and perhaps even give Ry Cooder pause. Tapping the strings both in front of and behind the slide, scraping it against the strings Weingarten creates washes of delayed and looped tones for a cinematic journey in sound. Honing his art over three decades has produced a singular voice that honors the slide’s history while pushing it into the future.
I would like to welcome Electro-Harmonix as a the latest advertiser/sponsor of Guitar Moderne. Full disclosure: I worked for the company a number of times over the last four decades. I can testify from the inside that they represent everything Guitar Moderne is about. During those years they pioneered sampling, looping, synthesis, and other sound enhancements no one had names for. I urge you to click through to check out the new C9 (the Mellotron sound is awesome), as well as the wealth of other sonic manglers they make. Here is just one of the exciting new products unveiled at the NAMM show.
The latest project from the Israeli guitarist /composer Eyal Maoz is the band Hypercolor, with bassist James Ilgenfritz, and drummer Lukas Ligeti. Their self-titled record is on John Zorn’s Tzadik Records. Though the band is based in Manhattan and Brooklyn and has hints of American Avant-guitar pioneer Sonny Sharrock running throughout their music, they also evidence a Euro sensibility in their combination of discipline and freedom, as well as their willingness to explore both melodic and dissonant textures.
In addition to his work with Hypercolor, Maoz leads the bands Edom (combining Jewish music with new wave, electronic music and disco), the acoustic Middle-Eastern band Dimyon, The Crazy Slavic Band, 9 Volt, and the Maoz-Sirkis Duet (with drummer Asaf Sirkis). He also performs the music of John Zorn with Cobra and Abraxas. Across all these projects, he demonstrates an enormous sonic vocabulary to go with his technical prowess.