It has been my dream to attend the Punkt Festival in Norway. There, some of the worlds most forward thinking musicians perform concerts that are recorded live, then remixed immediately after for another audience. In 2013 Eivind Aarset performed with his quartet, augmented by Jan Bang, and was subsequently remixed by Bang, Arve Henriksen and Eric Honore. I wasn’t there and probably neither were you, but fortunately for all of us both Aarset’s performance and the remix are presented here.
Slovakian guitarist David Kollar’s style includes elements of two Norwegian modern guitar icons, Eivind Aarset (an occasional collaborator) and Stian Westerhus. On the recently released, The Son, his atmospheric work recalls Aarset’s solo recordings and time as sideman to Nils Petter Molvaer, while Kollar’s noisier interjections bring to mind Westerhus’ experiments with pedals. It is the tension and release of atmosphere and noise that lend The Son the power to convey the strong emotions Kollar suffered during the illness of his son—feelings that inspired the recording. Listening to The Son is highly recommended, as is reading what Kollar has to say about its making and how he developed his unique style.
We begin our third installment of Guitar Moderne Festival videos with the spectacular 3rd set of a live performance on 13 Sept 2012 at Einstein cultural center Munich that took place simultaneously at two venues. Eivind Aarset and Marc Ducret are playing at Unterfahrt/Einstein, sending their live signals to Jan Bang (sampling) and Gunnar Geisse (laptop) at MUG/Einstein. Bang and Geisse are processing, sampling and realtime remixing the sounds of Aarset and Ducret. There is a signal path from Geisse to Bang as well. Some guitar sounds appear to be originating on Geisse’s computer.
Continue on for sets by Stian Westerhus, Dither, and Bill Frisell Continue reading
For the most part Europeans, and especially Scandinavians, are miles ahead of Americans when it comes to the seamless integration of jazz with sampling, beats, and electronics that is Nü-Jazz. Nils Petter Molvær brought out Khmer in 1995, while Bugge Wesseltoft, Jazzanova and St. Germain have been working this territory easily as long. Guitarists mining this particular type of fusion also seem to reside on the east side of the Atlantic: Eivind Aarset, Bram Stadhouders, Jeff Beck, Stian Westerhus, and Nguyên Lê have been long at home with the grooves of EDM and/or the sounds of experimental electronica.