Spotlight: Keisuke Matsuno

One day, I came across Keisuke Matsuno on Don Mount’s YouTube channel. Suddenly it was going, “Who is this guy? This is a kind of guitar I love: exactly the way he does what he does, in the context in which he does it.” Certainly, there are other guitar players playing modern guitar sounds within the context of already outside, noisy, or fully electronic music, like Matsuno’s work with Hans Tammen. Rarer is the ability to inject these elements into a largely consonant context, like Nels Cline with Wilco, Ethan Ballinger’s work with country star Lee Ann Womack, or the subversive playing Matsuno himself does in saxophonist Timo Vollbrecht’s Fly Magic ensemble.

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The Andy Summers Interview

Wow! Andy Summers! I got an email from the legendary guitarist’s publicist saying he was a fan of Guitar Moderne and would love to talk to the mag about his latest record, Metal Dog. When I picked myself up off the floor I contacted her and said, “Sure.”

It would be fair to say Summers was one of the rare players who changed the sound of the guitar in pop music. Echoes (no pun intended) of his style can be found in U-2, Rush, even Nirvana. For deep background, I recommend his book, One Train Later: A Memoir , and movie, Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving the Police. A great site about his gear through the years is here, and he also discusses the subject in some of these videos.

With a limited time to talk, I chose to concentrate on the Metal Dog record, as it is a perfect example of everything Guitar Moderne stands for: pushing the sonic and conceptual boundaries of making music with a guitar.

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Spotlight: Nick Reinhart

Hybrid descriptions of music are often a lazy way to avoid digging deep into a band’s musical qualities and, as often, inaccurate. But to call the music of Tera Melos Punk/Prog/Math/Metal/Ambient/Noise is necessary to cover all the ingredients of the band’s cut and paste style. What makes this ADD pastiche work where others fail is the depth of Nick Reinhart’s technique. His seemingly limitless command over both his guitar and the array of pedals at his feet, combined with the bloodletting energy he brings to the stage, make every musical digression compelling. I first met the man described as “Nels Cline’s younger punk rock brother” at the Earthquaker booth at NAMM, improvising up a storm, and finally got him to talk to Guitar Moderne.


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Spotlight: Florent Paris (Hors Sujet)

I was contacted by Florent Paris who sent a picture of his pedalboard and asked about reviewing the two-song EP of his music project Hors Sujet (loosely translates as “off topic”).  We don’t usually review recordings here, but his ambient combo of loveliness and drama was intriguing enough to instigate an interview.

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