Call it one of the worthiest legacies of 20th century music: overcoming the given vocabulary of a musical instrument. Consider the electric guitar and just how many creative souls have taken on and extended the known language of sound and technique. It seems quite remarkable that anyone can find still more to be done. But they do …. And moving beyond the conventional structure of the guitar – both physically and musically – has been a concern of Greg Malcolm’s music for nigh on 20 years.
These two releases see Greg concentrating entirely on solo performances (no multi-tracking in use) with his custom-built electric guitar. Lyttelton-based luthier Peter Steven worked with Greg for two years from conception through to final adjustments to create, in Steven’s words, an instrument “that someone will extend and will extend someone.” It’s a fantastic object to behold – a piece of aesthetic design and high craftiness. It has extra strings, pick ups and bridges, but thankfully only one neck ( Jimmy Page breathes easy). Greg and Peter have, in effect, “composed” an instrument. The extra drones, harmonics and other sounds (like those from the neck amplified at the nut end) have been totally integrated into the music.
The first notes of “Swimming in It” are underscored by primordial rumblings - sourced from the percussion of a spring hung on the guitar’s neck - and a melody both pensive and ominous. If you are familiar with the preceding “Homesick for Nowhere” CD, then the greater depth and warmth of the sounds here are immediately impressive. When the tune-proper enters, complete with gorgeous harmonics and a hovering suspended tone, the sense of progression is complete. It’s a near perfect piece of guitaring where sonics and melodics meet in warm embrace. It’s also one of several pieces where the character of different parts of the guitar are highlighted in separate sections: showing how the five pick ups used to amplify the different strings and areas of the guitar (using Peter Steven’s words again) provide different “lenses”, different viewpoints.
The rest of “Swimming” roams similar paths to “Homesick”: re-iterating tunes carefully orchestrated and accompanied by additional guitars played by feet, fans and, in one instance, steel wool. “Intermission” is the only Malcolm original (although the treatments of the traditional melodies is not at all derivative.) The melody harks back to earlier days when Greg played in the group One Leg Too Short. If I remember right, it was conceived as a kind of “Ornettish” tune and it sits very well alongside “Mob Job” - this record’s actual Ornette Coleman tune (last time it was “Lonely Woman”). Both get solid drone-based, toe-tapping performances with the melodies acting as a screen for the projection of layers of sound that, while engrossing, are never entirely restful.
Other great moments include the best fan texture I have heard from Greg – on “Lost in Time”. Its choppy detail helps give the fairly serious tune a needed lift. Then there is “Staring at the Sun” which sports the most transparent use of exotic harmony. In this case a Vietnamese melody gets the Malcolm treatment. It’s a nice example of the way Greg keeps the authentic tune, and rebuilds it to his own requirements: the use of string bends, flute-like still tones and cascading almost koto-like strums suggests a pan-Asian ensemble under the direction of those nimble fingers.
Much as I like “Swimming In It”, I was pleased to hear “Hung” was quite a different CD and a more complete departure from the M.O. of “Homesick”. “Ghost From the Past” sets the scene for a CD that seems more improvised and open-ended. As with all of Greg’s music, the melodic material is precise in mood, in this case “haunted” is about as good as I can do on paper – leaning on the title. The initial finger-picking gives way to a spacious two-voice improvisation with an especially desolate, searching passage of extreme string-bending as well as the usual “incidentals” that Greg throws in – squeals and rattles from the hyper-amplified whole guitar.
In fact, the incidental/textural elements get more disc time throughout “Hung”. Campbell Kneale has compiled the CD from Greg’s original recordings and he’s chosen a nice mix of noisier playing where the melodic elements emerge quite organically – capturing the sense of foreground/background in constant movement. The title track moves from pebble garden ambience to a almost processional feel, carried along by thudding floor guitar, while an industrious sawing texture is maintained. This makes me think of the sound documentary Greg made about Peter Steven at work. That the guitar being played and the guitar being made are equally sounds worth listening to.
The pacing of the tracks is great and you don’t really notice that the whole thing never actually stops. Campbell has tended to merge the separate pieces into a continuum and this works well. It’s interesting that there’s only one “cover” – Steve Lacy’s “Prayer”. It gets a characteristically patient and respectful arrangement. I’d like to think that the late Mr Lacy would approve of it’s spacious and reserved treatment. It’s part of the final sumptuous suite that leads from the blatant drone/electro maximalism of “Maltronics” (proving once and for all that guitars could do techno if they wanted) via the well-titled, fireside finger-picking of “Glow” and onto the heading-off-into-the-sunset “Chain of Fools”: an especially fetching Maloriginal.
The absence of other’s melodies just serves to highlight Greg’s facility, when improvising with his own music, and brings out possibly some of the most personal and involving playing he’s yet committed to disc. More please.
Review by John Kennedy
Greg Malcolm contact
http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~malcolmg/