Nels Cline

[Jeff Schwartz <jeffs@bgnet.bgsu.edu>]

I'm glad Paolo brought up Nels Cline, one of my favorite 
musicians and a master of the EH 16 second delay. I don't 
know if I'd call him a looper, he uses the delay mostly 
like Frisell used to (on say, Power Tools), to timestretch 
or reverse a phrase while it's decaying, to build clouds 
of noise for endings and transitions, and to get big 
throbbing Sonic Youth-like dissonances with one guitar in 
standard tuning.
So now I'm going to babble about his music.
Here are some records he's on besides the new Mike Watt.
Mike Watt-Ballhog or Tugboat?
Julius Arthur Hemphill & The JAH Band-Georgia Blue
Nels Cline Trio- Silencer, Ground, Chest
The Vinny Golia Quintet-Nation of Laws, Against the Grain, 
Razor
Live from the Knitting Factory (I forget which volume)
Nels Cline & Thurston Moore-Pillow Wands, In-Store
The Geraldine Fibbers-Butch
Nels Cline-Angelica
also albums by Alex Cline, Brad Dutz, Quartet Music. 
others

Ground and Pillow Wands are my current favorites. The 
composition and interplay on Ground are mindblowing in 
their depth and diversity, while Pillow Wands has some of 
the most beautiful guitar textures I've ever heard. The 
Vinny Golia albums give Nels tons of space to stretch out 
in what a smart-ass rock writer would call "post-jazz."
Nels' thing (as near as I understand it) is to approach 
the Sonic Youth big beautiful dissonant blob aesthetic in 
an incredibly musically literate way at the same time he's 
attempting a sweet Frisell/Scofield/Metheny thing in a 
punk way. Like if Greg Ginn, Jim Hall, and Lee Ranaldo 
were all the same person...
Anyway, check him out.


-- 
Jeff Schwartz
jeffs@bgnet.bgsu.edu
http://www.bgsu.edu/~jeffs/main.html