The Art of Prepared Guitar Volume One, by Jeff Gburek

The Art of Prepared Guitar Volume One

by Jeff Gburek

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castormorseflw C’est pour moi un bel objet sonore/album, c'est exactement les sons que je ne sais pas faire. C'est génial d'écouter ce que les autres se permettent de faire. Cela me pousse dans mes recherches. Et puis le travail de sons saturés est fin et précis et évoque en moi une imagination très sauvage et étrange. Merci pour votre beau travail. Favorite track: Getting Horizontal (Table Top).

George Cristian Vilela Pereira thumbnail

George Cristian Vilela Pereira It's a very challenging work. Not only because it goes a step further on the sonic exploration of the prepared guitar, but specially because the composer-guitarist Jeff Gburek challenges the notion that the prepared guitar can't groove or have a rhythm. Gburek brings a physicality on prepared guitar playing that may bring an expertise and may sound intriguing as much as exciting for those who want not only the brain, but also the body being melt together. Favorite track: Getting Horizontal (Table Top).

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	1.	Overly Lyrical Prelude 02:07
	2.	Toggled Modular Gapped Slides 08:12
	3.	Syd B Keith R 08:33
	4.	Switchblade Sorcery 05:32
	5.	Backwards Walk Through Magnetic Mirror 11:08
	6.	Broken String Thing 01:46
	7.	Attack of the Kitchen Sink Implements 02:32
	8.	Letting Everything Happen The Way It Happens 02:48
	9.	Even A Broken Guitar Can Play The Blues No Wave 04:04
	10.	The Elusive Most Atonal Chord 01:46
	11.	Thou Shalt Retain The Right to Funk Out 01:32
	12.	Wires You Never Touch Together Explained Part 1 00:19
	13.	Wires You Never Touch Together Explained Part 2 00:50
	14.	In Dub We Sometimes Trust 00:40
	15.	Not Showing Up in the Floyd Rose User's Manual 06:05
	16.	Getting Horizontal (Table Top) 14:19

about

The Art of Prepared Guitar began as a brain-child almost ten years ago. I'd mentioned it to Tom Carter who said, tell me when it comes out: so I'm telling him and now you too. It was supposed to be an album wherein I'd try to recap all the extended techniques, show essentially what's in the mojo bag, & track back through moments when I remembered first taking my eyes off the frets, when I started to play purely through sound and timbre. Initially I thought I would name my mentors in homage but at my age all the influences have been blended, boiled back down or up into genetic plasma from which each playing session recombines all the traits or strands into a novel structure negotiating the playing experience.

The titles bear witness to the irony of daring to make those definitions or attributions. I would say that this album however bridges a space between those psychedelic music moments of noise guitar (Syd, Jimi, Kath), no wave, free jazz noise like Sonny Sharock, then Derek Bailey and Keith Rowe -- players who probably would never have appeared on the stage together but who regularly haunt me while playing.

My resultant discoveries via prepared guitar did not speak of a purely abstract space though. I did feel the guitar becoming more modular as Keith observed, as I applied micro-cassettes and radios over the pick-ups, I noted that altering the guitar in various ways also revealed traces of more aboriginal music, ethers and archeological bleed. In essence, I became more of a receiver and relayer of energies via the guitar, the guitar was a listening device.

In attempting to move into the future of the guitar or the post-guitar (as in the case of Kevin Drumm or Annette Krebs where the guitar became deconstructed and/or displaced into other electro-acoustic processes, if you will), I also discovered aspects of earlier ethnic music, blues and tonalities that hinted at other mysteries of acoustic resonance ecologies, bugs and ghosts in the machinations.

The guitars come and the guitars go. I think sometimes the mermaids are within ears reach. Thanks to Michael for hosting my havoc.

credits

released May 19, 2023

Recorded in March 2023.
Guitars: Ibanez (model uncertain, but it's chrome blue), Hagstrom Viking, Höfner HCT-CS10.
Amps: Vox Mini, Hartke Bass and... preparations!
Design and layout - Atharwa Deshingkar.

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Ramble Records Melbourne, Australia

Ramble Records is an Independent record label based in Melbourne, Australia specialising in under-represented outsider music: guitar music, acid/avant folk, psych, no wave, post-punk, free / spiritual jazz, Indian classical, Middle Eastern, and avant-garde sounds from around the globe. ... more

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