#orcutt

[awidevastdominion]

Went to the dunes today, then lunch/wine tasting at the Presqu'ile Winery in Orcutt, CA. Much joy of sorts.

#presqu'ile winery #orcutt #wine tasting

[intopower]

Kadyn Orcutt. IG: @orcuttfitness

#kadyn orcutt

[psikonauti]

Rebecca Orcutt (American, b. 1992)

Rolling Down a Hill, 2022

Oil on canvas

#Rebecca Orcutt #upl #va #art #painting

[dustedmagazine]

2023: Bryon Rides Anxiety’s Peaks and Valleys

Yo La Tengo

This year really tossed us all around like a gigantic blender, swirling everything together into a writhing mass of fine particles. It’s been quite the ride. Thankfully amidst the chaos, there was music. The vast cornucopia of exhilarating sounds wound itself around the many genres, and the dozens of releases spread across these twelve months. It provided the healing salve to combat the bedlam lying in the realm beyond our ears.

For me, live music in 2023 was about quality over quantity. The two shows that affected me most this past year were aligned along the theme of reunion. I’ve been a fan of Yo La Tengo since high school but had strayed from the band’s past few releases. This Stupid World brought me back into their universe. I jumped at the chance to see them in Toronto; it had been decades since I last saw them play live. They played two sets, one soft and one loud, and they didn’t disappoint. As an added bonus, I got to meet fellow Dusted writer Ian Mathers at the show. Toronto post-rockers Do Make Say Think played their first show in six years in March, around my birthday. I wasn’t going to miss it. They unleashed an enticing set of music, playing material from across their entire catalog with intense energy. It was hypnotic and exhilarating. They were also jovial, joking about the current career prospects of the band members. It was a fun night.

Many perennial favorite groups and artists released excellent albums this year. Yo La Tengo returned to their early Matador form with This Stupid World, while The Clientele expanded into new, lush and uncanny territory on I’m Not There Anymore. Califone’s Villagers pushed the band’s adventurous, bluesy roots-rock into an experimental wonderland. Bill Orcutt released Jump On It, revealing his softer side. The Live in Brooklyn 2011 set from Sonic Youth found the group trying out songs they rarely played live, as they wound down their decades-long existence. Joshua Abrams’ Natural Information Society showed that they’re not done unleashing mesmerizing sonic salvos with Since Time is Gravity. Finally, Daniel Bachman continued to push his singular brand of Americana toward the outer limits with When the Roses Come Again, and Intercepted Message found Osees covering Cisco Systems’ telephone hold music. It was a good year for long-beloved institutions.

New to me this year was the band Famous Mammals and their polyglot post-punk album Instant Pop Expressionism Now! I returned to it time and time again; it was the soundtrack to my late summer and my autumn. Digging deeper into the San Francisco band’s origins, I discovered a previously hidden world of Bay Area post-punk, populated by a tight-knit scene that originated with The World, which would fracture into Famous Mammals, Non Plus Temps, Blues Lawyer, Children Maybe Later and others. The LP in question blends elements of Swell Maps, Young Marble Giants and Television Personalities, aligning with those outfits’ brashness, naivete, and wry sense of humor. It was at the top of my list in 2023 and led me to explore the SF underground further. That digging led me to Will York’s encyclopedic tome Who Cares Anyway? York gives an in-depth perspective to the goings on in the Bay Area from the post-hippie origins of its punk scene to the self-destructive chaos of Flipper and the visionary artistry behind acts such as Mr. Bungle, Caroliner, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, et cetera. He also investigates the unique personalities that comprised the scene such as Brandon Kearney, Gregg Turkington, Seymour Glass, Barbara Manning, and Joe Pop-o-Pie. The book is worth exploring if you’re at all interested in any of the names I mentioned.

I always highlight at least one Canadian release, and this year I really got into the self-titled debut from Toronto duo You Can Can. The pairing of sound artist Andrew Zukerman and vocalist Felicity Williams is the perfect comingling of the familiar and the otherworldly. Alien soundscapes intercept beautifully crafted song forms, with synth squiggles and abstract patterns writhing alongside folk music signifiers. Let’s hope that You Can Can have more music in store for us in 2024 and beyond.

Bryon Hayes

#dusted magazine #yearend 2023 #bryon hayes #yo la tengo #do make say think #the clientele #califone #bill orcutt #sonic youth #joshua abrams’ natural information society #daniel bachman #osees #famous mammals #will york #you can can

[qazxswsblog]

#kadyn orcutt

[jgthirlwell]

04.30.24 Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet at Le Poisson Rouge. Bill Orcutt, Wendy Eisenberg, Ava Mendoza and Shane Parish.

#Bill Orcutt #Wendy Eisenberg #Ava Mendoza #Shane Parish #Le Poisson Rouge #Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet - Roulette, Brooklyn, New York, March 27, 2023 / Tiny Desk Concert

Here's what I wrote about Bill Orcutt's Music for Four Guitars for Aquarium Drunkard's year-end roundup: "A multitracked electric guitar masterpiece, [it] offers a richly layered trip. As with everything Orcutt does, there’s a wild intensity at work, but the interlinked compositions here could also work as meditation soundtracks. Orcutt continues to surprise." 

Most surprising, perhaps, is that Orcutt managed to take Four Guitars on the road this year. He brought with him some serious underground ringers to bring this stuff to life: Shane Parish, Ava Mendoza and Wendy Eisenberg. Thanks to Parish's notations, the quartet hews closely to the original compositions, but in a live setting, things open up and flow, creating a truly heady listening (and viewing) experience. Knotty, gnarly, totally beautiful. The musicians also seem to be having a blast playing together, which is always a plus in my book.

And hey, the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet is playing in Los Angeles TONIGHT. I'd go if I were you.

#bill orcutt #shane parish #ava mendoza #wendy eisenberg

[mr-craig]

Thanks to NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts for introducing me to another new-to-me artist — Bill Orcutt. On the strength of this set, I bought the album Music for Four Guitars and I love it. Just the kind of spiky guitar noise my ears didn't know they were craving.

#Bill Orcutt #Music for Four Guitars #Tiny Desk Concert #NPR Tiny Desk #guitar #guitars #Youtube

[voskhozhdeniye]

#Music #Bill Orcutt

[mrdirtybear]

Bill Orcutt (born 1962) is an American guitarist who started out in a punk band, as many modern musicians did, not least to get the live experience. As the music changed so the band played changed, so the lives the band members changed, until after five albums Bill Orcutt chose to change his profession. Looking back at the music after over a decade’s break he started to make music again with 2009′s ‘A New Way to Pay Old Debts’. His latest album is ‘Music For Four Guitars’ and it is attracting a fair amount of attention. Here it is to listen to. To my ears it sounds like Robert Fripp playing guitar in the style of Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band, circa ‘Trout Mask Replica’ with a little Steve Reich repetition/variation thrown in for good measure. The word ‘Bracing’ describes it well.    

#bill orcutt

[toffeethief]

Bill Orcutt - At A Distance

#tunes #bill orcutt #Bandcamp

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 745: Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt Made Out of Sound

This is another album highlight of 2021.

I got a lot of mileage out of Bill Orcutt’s 2019 album, Odds Against Tomorrow. I usually need to be in a very specific and patient headspace for improvisational music, but Odds Against Tomorrow was a strangely alluring, approachable, and all-purpose record despite Orcutt’s free-form guitar explorations. I continue to get a lot of mileage out of that album---there’s this ecstatic, uninhibited beauty about it, like  hearing a traditionally “great” guitar player get so swept up in the moment that he deliberately breaks the rules and goes into pure whacked out expressionistic bliss without ever fumbling or flubbing a note. Truly inspirational.

On Made Out of Sound, Orcutt explores similar timbral terrain with drummer Chris Corsano. The melodies still feel rooted in early American music, but Corsano helps push and pull at anything that veers too close to structure. It’s loose and free, but remarkably locked in and resonant. 

Apparently I’m not the only person that felt this way, as the initial vinyl pressing for Made Out of Sound sold out almost immediately. I had to make do with listening to it online until a repress came along. 

#Bill Orcutt #chris corsano #everyrecordiown

[intopower]

Kadyn Orcutt. IG: @orcuttfitness

#kadyn orcutt

[eyepool]

Wow! A lot of Bill Orcutt stuff goes over my head, but this set fully rocks — like a distillation of Gang of Four, Television and early Sonic Youth into an intricate scrawl of tangly notes.

Fuck, my guitars have 50% more strings than theirs but I can’t play 1/10 as well 😢

#bill orcutt #music #guitar #Youtube

[dustedmagazine]

Bill Orcutt — Jump On It (Palilalia)

Photo by Steve Goodwin

Jump On It by Bill Orcutt

Jump On It comes freighted with curiosity and expectation. It is Bill Orcutt’s first solo acoustic recording since Solo Acoustic Volume 10, which he recorded for VDSQ on Christmas day, 2013. It’s worth noting that eleven years elapsed between Harry Pussy’s expiration in 1997 and Orcutt’s return  came apart in 1997. Might it be that a decade and change is some sort of Orcuttian gestational period? 

To be sure, there are differences between the two gaps. Orcutt pretty much hung up his guitar after the 1998 release, Let’s Build A Pussy, a death rattle of a double LP created from one time-stretched utterance by HP’s singer-drummer, Adris Hoyos. He moved across the country to San Francisco, got a job and a family, and didn’t really think about playing music again until the act of compiling Harry Pussy’s scattered vinyl onto the CD You’ll Never Play This Town Again recharged him with the joy of his own sound. After that, he picked up an acoustic guitar and began developing the material that became A New Way To Pay Old Debts, a frantic dive into punk blues encrusted with enough oxidized crud to justify drydocking a supertanker. By contrast, Orcutt’s remained steadily in the public eye since 2013. He’s played electric guitar in solo, improvised duo, and quartet settings, and also pursued a less visible but highly relevant sideline in electronic, systems-oriented experimentation that elaborates upon ideas proposed by Let’s Build A Pussy. 

Thematically, the first electric solo LP, Bill Orcutt, continued the thread of interrogating the American songbook pursued on its acoustic predecessors. But beginning with that record, Orcutt has shown an increased concern with making records whose sonic qualities won’t lacerate your ears. Additionally, the original material on his most recent collaboration with Chris Corsano, Made Out Of Sound, and solo LP, Odds Against Tomorrow, give voice to a newfound lyricism. These developments all relate to the music on Jump On It, which, like its immediate predecessor, Music For Four Guitars, is a brief and unfailingly on point. Orcutt used a Harmony Sovereign guitar instead of the old Kay, and while he recorded it at home, he retained Chuck Johnson to mix and master the album’s ten tracks. The resulting sound is clear and resonant, which does justice to the music Orcutt’s composed. And instead of feral yelps, ringing phones, and passing traffic, the guitarist accompanies himself with subliminally registered breaths. 

“What Do You Do With Memory” opens the album with a pensive melody. While the tune leads to some clusters and crabbed runs, its symmetrical resolution is as reflective as its beginning. “The Life Of Jesus” and “A Natural Death” likewise uses elegant themes to frame their flurries of trademarked dissonance. And the spacious arrangement and patient development of “An Ocean Will Find Its Shore” wouldn’t be out of place on a Ralph Towner record. There, I said it. While there’s not enough added reverb to earn Orcutt a ticket to a photo op in the fjords, Jump On It projects enough conventional beauty to lure in some ECM fans. The jaggedness and urgency is still there, but it’s contained within a broader emotional and sonic spectrum.   

Bill Meyer

#bill orcutt #jump on it #palilia #bill meyer #albumreview #dusted magazine #acoustic guitar #harry pussy

[qazxswsblog]

#kadyn orcutt