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Strange Steers The Sun: Melodies for Prepared Guitar, Vol. 3

by House Wind

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1.
Roofsnail 01:06
2.
Prettyshield 02:30
3.
Bitternose 01:49
4.
Sheepfold 01:31
5.
6.
Horizonsmile 03:50
7.
Bushyoko 01:36
8.
Grimmless 02:46
9.
10.
11.
Heavenshead 03:15

about

Music from late summer 2019 through late winter 2020.
Songs were played on a Danelectro 12-string and recorded live to a Zoom H4n through a small Vox amp. MXR delay and Empress Para Eq were the only effects pedals. Sounds were created using "preparations" that included paper clips, screwdrivers, glass dropper, pens and nails, woven through and under the guitar strings.

Thank you to Eirinn M for mixing and mastering.

Thanks to the following people for their encouragement and enthusiasm for the House Wind project: Andromeda Monk, Chris-a-riffic, Duncan McHugh, Eirinn M, Tracey Vath, Katie Streibel, Craig Stensrud, Madison Mayhew, Dorothy Marshall, Randy Iwata, Alex Archibald, Michelle Furbacher, Dan Loan, Adrian Teacher, Jeff Cancade, Audrey MacDonald and Sonya Eui.

Particular thanks to KC Wei at Agony Klub.

Cover painting by Matthew Budden

***
HOUSE WIND / PREPARED GUITAR PIECES
 
The idea of a "prepared" instrument is attributed to John Cage, who put "preparations" like screws, weather stripping and bamboo strips on and in between piano strings for various compositions from 1939 on. These simple preparations significantly altered the timbre of the piano, effectively turning it into a tuned percussion instrument. While never widely used, the technique was embraced by students of the avant garde and began to surface in rock and roll music in the 1960s. John Cale's piano prepared with paper clips on The Velvet Underground's "All Tomorrow's Parties" is one of the more celebrated examples.
 
Guitarists on the experimental fringes of popular music toyed with preparations throughout the latter 60s and 1970s, Fred Frith perhaps becoming the best known exponent for his music and curating the largely improvised "Guitar Solos" albums. Former Glenn Branca stalwarts Sonic Youth were among the bands that introduced the practice to a much wider audience in the 1980s.
 
With the ubiquity of digital guitar effects, the idea of extending the guitar's sonic palette by putting popsicle sticks through the strings now seems somewhat quaint and primitive. It is precisely the limitations of these tangible "analog tools" which appeals to me. The change to the instrument is incremental. The preparations can be seen, felt and acted upon. The guitar behaves differently, we behave differently, and our dialogue is renewed.
 
Once you get into the swing of it, the practice of transforming sound in this way starts to feel positively arcane, like it has the pull of magic. You're evoking a kind of "familiar strangeness" simply by weaving a strip of plastic or wire through the strings. Sonic "impurities" like string buzzing, off-pitches and ungovernable overtones begin to find a home in concert with more pristine and dulcet tones. One becomes more attuned to music-making that accommodates and mirrors the aleatory spectrum of sounds heard in nature. Even more, this aesthetic can often seem to affect a temporal and cultural shift, immediately suggesting kinship with older music traditions, particularly non-Western ones, like Gamelan and Japanese shamisen and koto.
 
Matthew Budden, Vancouver, 2018

credits

released June 5, 2020

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