orchestramaxfieldparrish: Guitar Improvisations (Volumes I - VI)
Faith Strange

Mike Fazio's six-volume Guitar Improvisations is an extraordinary document of unfiltered, real-time artistic expression; witnessing the live creation of material by a single musician, especially when it's so marked by honesty and authenticity is an always special experience. A more personal statement by him couldn't be imagined as everything associated with it was created him—music, production, mastering, photography, and packaging. It's available as a download, naturally, but is best experienced in its physical form, Fazio having prepared a 100-copy edition that sees a USB drive containing the volumes' tracks packaged with a thirty-two-page booklet inside a semi-transparent vellum sleeve. Adding to the poetic dimension of the project, quoted passages by Rumi (“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears”), Albertus Magnus (“Heaven is moved by a soul that is conjoined to it”), and others accompany the respective set-lists. (In the spirit of full disclosure, orchestramaxfieldparrish material has appeared on two of textura's four releases. Enthusiastic endorsement of this new release originates, however, not out of a desire to support an artist whose efforts have enriched our products; it's more the case that the exceptional quality of this six-volume set reminds us once again of the many reasons why we approached Fazio in the first place to be a part of textura's releases.)

Recorded between February and May 2020 in New York City, the pieces (all first takes) were done as stream-of-consciousness performances; whatever manipulations, treatments, and loops are present also happened in real time. Fazio describes the settings as pure expressions aside from the fact that they also symbolize his personal response to the pandemic and are dedicated to the vast number of people whose lives were lost to it. The three-and-a-half hours of guitar playing are accompanied in a couple of instances by field recordings collected in Colorado and Wyoming during the fall of 2019 (bird twitter in “Valya's Willow,” for instance). As listeners familiar with his earlier work are aware, Fazio is a master of texture, and to that end the pieces' linear expressions are augmented by layers of atmospheric elements.

The six volumes present twenty-four pieces, each distinctly titled and collected into separate groupings of three, four, and five tracks, the last volume the exception in featuring a single, half-hour setting (the all-encompassing “Ævum”). The music can be absorbed as separate sets, of course, but my preference is to treat the release as a totality; broached in such manner, the far-reaching scope of the project is brought into sharper relief and the magnitude of the accomplishment all the more clear. Being real-time improvs, an occasional ‘accident' occurs; rather than correcting such moments in post-production, Fazio opted to leave them, a wise move as doing so only enhances the music's authenticity. An occasional click from a guitar pedal is audible also, it too reinforcing the personal dimension of the project.

Electric guitar is the primary sound-generator, aside from the first volume's “The Sunlit Path” where acoustic guitars and autoharp also appear. Aggressive and peaceful sequences occur in equal measure, the music often contemplative in its patient, searching unfolding (“Path,” “Valya's Willow”) but elsewhere forceful, such as when ripples sweep boldly across the music's surfaces in “Ascent.” Particularly beautiful is the meditative “Heatherlands,” the first of three extended soundscapes on the Paisaghji volume, for the way its lustrous drones drift and echo for minutes on end. In keeping with its title, “Canyonlands” likewise stretches out, as does “Dolphy Feathers,” its seventeen minutes an ethereal hall-of-mirrors packed with spectral presences, e-bow-like flourishes, and ominous rumblings.

The fifth volume's title, A New Treatise On Cosmic Fire, cheekily riffs on an infamous instrumental epic from Todd Rundgren's Initiation. With much of it exuding a kind of wide-eyed wonder, the dazzling “Vishudda - Sounds Beyond Ears” in particular, Fazio's mesmerizing creation proves easier to digest than his counterpart's was deemed at the time of its 1975 release. The first of five parts, “Anahata - The Halls of Air” is suitably spacious in its evoking of some mystical architectural structure; animated by comparison is “Muladhara - The Dance of Kundalini.”

October 2020