released August 5, 2020
Electric guitar, engineering, mastering, photography, typography - Mike Fazio
Recorded during The Coldest Spring, between February 1, 2020 through May 6, 2020 in New York City. Field recordings recorded in Colorado and Wyoming during The Beautiful Autumn, 2019. Mastered May 7 through June 1, 2020.
from textura:
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.”
Fazio possesses an encyclopedic familiarity with other guitarists, past and present, and he'd be the first to acknowledge them as influences. Yet while a trace of Fripp does surface in a few pieces, Fazio is a true original, an artist of the utmost integrity incapable of doing anything but follow his own path. In that regard, Guitar Improvisations captures the sound of him letting his muse speak as directly as possible. It is, all told, a remarkable statement.
October 2020
from Vital Weekly:
Mike Fazio, the man behind Orchestramaxfieldparrish (and also the Faith Strange label and a host of other monikers), loves to present his work quite lavishly. This USB comes in a small paper bag, attached to a finely printed, 32 pages 7" sized booklet with full-colour photographs and text. 'Volumes', as mentioned in the title, is something we have to take literally. On the USB device, there are six folders, volumes, each a
bunch of pieces, ranging from one to six. In total, this is more than three hours worth of music.
As this is (hopefully!) the last day of the local heatwave (and I will shut up about it also) with hardly any sunshine and loads of clouds, waiting for the thunder to end it all, I sunk back, once more, in my chair with a big book ('These Truths, A History of The United States' by Jill Lepore, if you must know) and continued reading while in the background, Fazio plays his guitar, "spontaneously and manipulated, treated and looped and mixed in real-time to stereo" and there have been very few overdubs, except for some field recordings here and there and some extra layers of guitars on a few others. All of this was recorded during what Fazio calls the cold spring of 2020, and that is not just a temperature thing. It all has to do with the pandemic thing; isolation and death. As such the somewhat grey day helps me to enjoy what I hear. I found it hard to say, once the music was over, which
track stood out, and which not.
Fazio uses a lot of sustaining sounds, probably sampling his e-bow on the strings, and creates extended fields of drone music made with a guitar. As such, each piece is the same, maybe, or each one is a different colour variation of the same thing? I know when I write that you might think 'oh, all the same for three hours', but that it is not. There is quite some variation in here. Sometimes Fazio adds some shorter strumming notes to the menu (in 'Muladhara - The Dance Of Kundalini'), or some more dissonance (in 'Vishudda - Sounds Beyond Ears', at almost three minutes the shortest piece here).
It is music to sit by and watch it happen, flow along. It might not be that different from say what Dirk Serries did with his Microphonics projects and many other guitar slingers before and after that, but I thought this was all a wonderful trip. (FdW)
––– Address:
faithstrange.bandcamp.com
from Musique Machine:
Orchestramaxparrish is the one-man ambient guitar improv project from the mind of New York resident Mike Fazio, guitarist with Life with the Lions, Gods of Electricity and Chili Faction. Mike has also recorded several solo projects under a variety of names including, ÆRA, A Guide for Reason, orchestramaxfieldparrish, and the Sonic Arts Society. He is also the founder of the record label Faith Strange through which he has released much of his music.
Guitar Improvisations Vol I – VI is the culmination of a really interesting project that saw Fazio record a series of guitar jams and improvisations in the studio and then manipulate them to create what we hear on this blockbuster six-album set. Here it’s presented as a USB drive, which comes presented with a thirty-two-page booklet. The set can also be digital download- for both options drop by the projects bandcamp here
Each is named as if it were a separate album, and in fact, each album is stylistically different to the others in some way. What is the same across the board is that Mike Fazio is the only musician involved, and every track was a first take with little to no overdubs anywhere. The first album, Unseen Unspoken Ascending is a suite of agreeable ambient guitar tracks that can feel strangely relaxing and uplifting. It’s a pleasant enough manner, in which, to get things underway. The second disc, Path follows a similar trajectory, but adds some found sounds, particularly on "Valya’s Widow", whilst the final track "Ascent" features some more traditional sounding guitar playing interspersed with the more experimental drones and loops. Album three, Paisaghji, has a slight Eastern flavour to it, this is also the first album that sounds quite cinematic to my ears. The Coldest Spring is the fourth album, featuring an increase in the use of distortion and backward tape loops to create something slightly more psychedelic in nature. The fifth album is the wonderfully titled, A New Treatise on Cosmic Fire, and once again the mystical eastern, cinematic feel is present, this also bears out in the fact that each track is named after a different chakra. The last album features one long thirty three-minute track, "Aevum". This is a fine way to close out the collection as it slowly builds from a gentle ambience to something far grander in scale. An epic cinematic masterpiece, if ever there was.
Overall, this six-album set of ambient guitar improvisations makes for a wonderful accompaniment to meditation and draws the listener in to appreciate the beautiful musical intricacies that underlay the whole experience. In fact, experience is the best way to describe listening to the albums on show here, as they take the listener on an epic magical journey through different musical landscapes. Simply put, this is a lovely meditative slab of ambient guitar drone that leaves the listener feeling refreshed, relaxed and ready to take on whatever the world has to offer.
- Darren Charles
