Articles
2009 Artists' Picks
Lymbyc Systym

Albums
Cory Allen
aus
The Bird Ensemble
Canaille
Catlin & Machinefabriek
Greg Davis
Loren Dent
Dirac
Drafted By Minotaurs
Flica
Sarah Goldfarb & JHK
Gown
John Hollenbeck
Viviane Houle
I/DEX
Akira Kosemura
Andrew McKenna Lee
Le Lendemain
LRAD
Lymbyc Systym
Melorman
Muskox
The Mercury Program
Nikasaya
Northerner
nörz
Noveller / Aidan Baker
Redshape
Marina Rosenfeld
Stripmall Architecture
Sturqen
Wes Willenbring
The Tony Wilson Sextet
Julia Wolfe
Peter Wright
Zelienople

Compilations / Mixes
Blackoperator
Glimpse Four:Twenty 03
Kod.eX
Portland Stories

EPs
Molnbär Av John
Tommi Bass & B.B.S.C.
Julian Beau
Colours-Volume 5
Dalot
Echologist
Simon James French
Geiom & Shortstuff
General Elektriks
Geskia
Ernest Gonzales
Gradient
Jacksonville
Joker
Ann Laplantine
Loko
Machinefabriek
Stefano Pilia
Damian Valles

Andrew McKenna Lee: Solar/Electric
Andrew McKenna Lee

Andrew McKenna Lee made a strong impression with his early 2009 recording Gravity and Air and now makes perhaps an even stronger impression with his latest collection Solar/Electric. While the earlier release combined original compositions with a reading of J.S. Bach's Prelude for Lute, BWV 999, the new one repeats the pattern in equally bold manner by pairing a version of Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint (most famously known in Pat Metheny's performance) with two original compositions, the longest of which, 2005's “Sunrise from the Bottom of the Sea,” pays homage to Jimi Hendrix (more specifically, the piece is Lee's response to Hendrix's 1967 song “Are You Experienced”). It's a trippy, prog-styled, fifteen-minute fantasia that pairs pre-recorded material Lee produced using instruments at his immediate disposal—sixteen tuned crystal glasses, recorders, glockenspiel, viola, Appalachian mountain dulcimer, electric guitar, electric bass, steel string and nylon string guitars, African djembe and udu drums, and a sixteen-inch frame drum—with live electric guitar playing that, in its snarl and wah-wah, occasionally recalls Hendrix's style. In short, the piece shows an unbowed Lee at his most free and the guitar playing is often blues-drenched, heavy, and raucous—a feel, of course, diametrically opposed to the ultra-controlled precision that one associates with Reich's 1987 work.

Lee offers a splendid rendition of Electric Counterpoint, even if it's one hard pressed to match Metheny's or supplant it in any significant way. If Lee's performance is similar to Metheny's, that's due to the tight compositional design of the work; what is different is the slightly more aggressive and subtly blues-inflected timbre of the guitar that comes through most noticeably in the “Fast” third movement. As other guitarists have done before him, Lee plays against a pre-recorded tape of himself that's built from ten guitar and two bass parts. Anyone unfamiliar with the piece will automatically identify it as a Reich work by its pulsation and contrapuntal, interlocking weave of melodic patterns. Lee nicely rounds out the album by returning to the psychedelic ambiance with which it began via the limpid, five-minute closer “One Thought Among Many.” A loose and drifting feel pervades the piece as Lee generates a rootless swirl from washes and loops, and what results is a coda of rather aquatic and liquidy character.

January 2010