a r t i s t : Bill Orcutt
t i t l e : A New Way To Pay Old Debts
d a t e : 2009
l a b e l : Palilalia
c a t : PAL-002
s o u r c e : Vinyl
g e n r e : Avantgarde/Experimental
r l s. d a t e : Dec/2009
t r a c k s : 08
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 40,6 MB
_______________________________________________________________________
When guitarist Bill Orcutt dropped off the edge of the world
after his band, Harry Pussy, imploded sometime in the
late-90s, a buncha people were really fucking sorry. His
guitar playing in that group, alongside Adris Hoyos's
phenomenal drums and vocals, pretty much established a whole
new blueprint for post-hardcore avant rock destruction. The
fact that there isn't a Harry Pussy tribute band in every
fucking suburban town the world over is only down to that fact
that Orcutt and Hoyos's playing was so far beyond technique
that no one could hope to even ape em, so in their absence
everyone went back to jamming drones, triggering loops and
gargling random alphabets. And while Hoyos fell in with the
whole Swill Radio cabal for a while, Orcutt's lack of a
profile led to a buncha rumours, the most popular one being
something to do with how he had jacked in music cause the
underground was strictly for jerks and he was now working on
some experimental movie in the wilds of nowhere. So it was as
shocking as a power electronics fan turning up with a
girlfriend when a solo 7" from Orcutt came out of nowhere
earlier this year before being hoovered up by lovers of the
good stuff and locked away in secure record vaults the world
over. Then came the news that he was only going to be jamming
at Nyoukis's Colour Out Of Space with the best free jazz
drummer in the UK, Mr Paul Hession and then - now (!) -- comes
this motherfucker, a full-length solo album privately issued
by Orcutt himself with virtually nada in terms of inside info.
On A New Way To Pay Old Debts Orcutt is playing a four-string
acoustic guitar - and he is fucking *playing* it. Like the
'High-Waisted' 7", the material picks up where Sonny Sharrock
left the instrument hanging on Black Woman's 'Blind Willie',
with an amphetamine-blues style that combines feral vocal
grunts and squeals (almost in the style of early Mazzacane),
the kind of aggressive raga form of Roger McGuinn's furthest
navigations of 'Eight Miles High', the formally staggering,
postcard-from-another-world feel of Joseph Spence's Folkways
recordings and a spike of hardcore adrenaline. The music
retains the incredible dynamism of Harry Pussy, from the
dive-bombing bass strings that resound like sprung traps
through the lightning flash of the treble. Like Derek Bailey,
a player that Orcutt has a lot in common with, Orcutt's
technique comes from the inside, it's not about F/X or loops
or fuzz or any kind of extended technique, it's one man
wrestling with the idea of guitar as sonic reducer. His
approach is so tactile, so monomaniacal in its blunt
physicality, like when he obsesses over the same screaming
single note again and again, shadowing it with the same vocal
cry before dropping into zagging barbed-wire repeats, that it
feels like the most exciting free/rock/jazz/blues of your
lifetime. Indeed, this LP shows up alla the solo acoustic
guitar artists of the past whenever as a buncha dull furniture
polishers. The ultimate solo guitar record form the greatest
rock guitarist of the 'noise' era. A no-brainer for album of
the year. Comes with pro-printed sleeves, self-released on
Orcutt's own private press. Highest possible recommendation.
_______________________________________________________________________
01-Lip Rich [04:47]
02-Sad News From Korea [02:51]
03-Pocket Underground [01:41]
04-Too Late To Fly [06:50]
05-My Reckless Parts [03:35]
06-Street Peaches [02:13]
07-A New Way To Pay Old Debts [06:12]
08-Cold Ground [04:37]
-------
32:46 min