The Wilco lead guitarist's latest album is a deep exploration into free-from, improvised music but with a more textural, melodic slant.
Album
The Nels Cline SingersMACROSCOPE
Mack Avenue Records
If the only thing you’ve heard from sonic alchemist Nels Cline is the indie-rock rumblings he adds to Wilco, you’re missing out on one of the most creative guitarists around. His latest album, MACROSCOPE, is a deep exploration into free-from, improvised music but with a more textural, melodic slant. Cline’s trio (drummer Scott Amendola and bassist Trevor Dunn) actively pursues the spirit and freedom of exciting jazz music, but with modern tones. With that in mind, neither Cline or Dunn are afraid to step on an effect and make some “noise” if it pushes the group’s aesthetic and mission forward.
The intro to “Red Before Orange” juxtaposes a throbbing, almost EDM bass line with a beautifully unadorned Wes Montgomery-like melody before the group collectively catches its breath and Cline soars into the Hendrixian stratosphere. The stop-and-go of “Sascha’s Book of Frogs” proves that NCS has a racecar engine with an avant-garde outlook. This isn’t easy music to get into—and it’s not supposed to be. Cline’s musical trick bag is always surprising, but never excessive.
Must-hear track: “Climb Down,” “Canales’ Cabeza”
From Nels:
This is a groover in 6/4 dedicated to our friend and wizard chef Paul Canales, one of the coolest (yet most intense) people I know and a huge supporter of forward-leaning music. Songs like this are really just excuses to blow over a percolating ostinato. Trevor (Dunn, on electric bass) and Scott (Amendola, on drums) totally bring it. I almost always get tense trying to play a smokin' solo in the studio with headphones, and this is no exception!
That said, I like the composition and I intend to rock this tune hard on upcoming gigs. For all you gearheads out there, I’m playing a ’59 Fender Jazzmaster (my sunburst “New York” one), a Klon Centaur with its purity of purpose sullied by my object-of-ridicule Boss CS-3 compressor (I never do this, but that night I did...), and a ZT Club amp. That's right—a plastic-covered, particleboard, solid-state, made-in-China cube so un-PC that I’m feeling the waves of future bad karma as I write this. Anyway, my sweet ’60s Panoramic had a blown speaker and the session was, to say the least, time sensitive, so I had to go with what works! I use that little silver cube all over New York: It’s portable, not precious, and difficult to break (though I did manage to destroy the input jack recently by knocking the thing over during a no-holds-barred duo gig with Fred Frith). I hope you enjoy this straightforward tribute to a prince of a fellow/culinary king. If you find yourself in Oakland, California, check out his restaurant, Duende, and sample his Basque-inspired offerings.
The final day is here! Enter Stompboxtober Day 31 for your last chance to win today’s pedal from Keeley and finish the month strong!
Keeley Octa Psi Transfigurating Fuzz Pedal with Polyphonic Pitch Shifting
Meet the OCTA PSI Transfigurating Fuzz – The Ultimate Combination of Pitch-Shifter, Octave Generator, and Tri-Voiced Analog Fuzz! Key features include: Instant Effect Order Switching, Flexible Output Configuration, Momentary or Latching Octave/Pitch, and more! Each pitch shift mode includes an up, down, and dual setting, resulting in 24 different modes.
Does the guitar’s design encourage sonic exploration more than sight reading?
A popular song between 1910 and 1920 would usually sell millions of copies of sheet music annually. The world population was roughly 25 percent of what it is today, so imagine those sales would be four or five times larger in an alternate-reality 2024. My father is 88, but even with his generation, friends and family would routinely gather around a piano and play and sing their way through a stack of songbooks. (This still happens at my dad’s house every time I’m there.)
Back in their day, recordings of music were a way to promote sheet music. Labels released recordings only after sheet-music sales slowed down on a particular song. That means that until recently, a large section of society not only knew how to read music well, but they did it often—not as often as we stare at our phones, but it was a primary part of home entertainment. By today’s standards, written music feels like a dead language. Music is probably the most common language on Earth, yet I bet it has the highest illiteracy rate.
Developed specifically for Tyler Bryant, the Black Magick Reverb TB is the high-power version of Supro's flagship 1x12 combo amplifier.
At the heart of this all-tube amp is a matched pair of military-grade Sovtek 5881 power tubes configured to deliver 35-Watts of pure Class A power. In addition to the upgraded power section, the Black Magick Reverb TB also features a “bright cap” modification on Channel 1, providing extra sparkle and added versatility when blended with the original Black Magick preamp on Channel 2.
The two complementary channels are summed in parallel and fed into a 2-band EQ followed by tube-driven spring reverb and tremolo effects plus a master volume to tame the output as needed. This unique, signature variant of the Black Magick Reverb is dressed in elegant Black Scandia tolex and comes loaded with a custom-built Supro BD12 speaker made by Celestion.
Price: $1,699.
Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine is one of the loudest guitarists around. And he puts his volume to work creating mythical tones that have captured so many of our imaginations, including our special shoegaze correspondent, guitarist and pedal-maestro Andy Pitcher, who is our guest today.
My Bloody Valentine has a short discography made up of just a few albums and EPs that span decades. Meticulous as he seems to be, Shields creates texture out of his layers of tracks and loops and fuzz throughout, creating a music that needs to be felt as much as it needs to be heard.
We go to the ultimate source as Billy Corgan leaves us a message about how it felt to hear those sounds in the pre-internet days, when rather than pull up a YouTube clip, your imagination would have to guide you toward a tone.
But not everyone is an MBV fan, so this conversation is part superfan hype and part debate. We can all agree Kevin Shields is a guitarists you should know, but we can’t all agree what to do with that information.