Nick Millevoi: "Black Figure of a Bird" Delivers High Impact 12-String Electric Guitar Solos

This past March I covered the avant power trio Many Arms and their high energy assault speed metal. The guitarist on that was Nick Millevoi. Nick has been busy since then, among other things putting together a solo CD of 12-string electric guitar pieces, Black Figure of a Bird (Sundmagi na001). It just came out and will no doubt be turning a few heads around.

Essentially Nick has created some structured outness for six episodic segments that have an overal aura about them but also pacing and variational depth. He uses the full sonarity of the 12-string. He'll deviate from standard tunings (it sounds like) to fashion open resonant chords of an unusual sort, make interesting use of chiming harmonics, then come in with dynamically alive industrial trance figures (sometimes sounding a hair like late Crimson or the League of Crafty Guitarists only much more insistent), and so on.

There is a good deal of really interesting guitar work happening on Black Figure. The sounds he gets set him apart; the note choices, chord voicings and rapid strummings put him in a league of his own.

This is sometimes startling, ever-engaging, bright-dark and brittle music. And what seems most encouraging to me is that it is music first and foremost. It is rather remarkable as guitar music as well but you go away from the disk knowing you have heard good music.

Welcome to the Millevoi Zone....you can get there from here. I recommend that you make the trip.

Elliott Sharp: Solo Electric Guitar, Played His Way

Elliott Sharp, guitar pioneer, composer and multi-instrumentalist, has always seemed to go his own way, in the process becoming a major presence in the now globally recognized downtown music enclave. He's successfully created Sharpesque interpretations of the blues, composed and performed exciting works for both small and large ensembles, hosted a web radio show of great diversity and discernment for MOMA's PS1 web site, among other things. He's also recorded a series of improvisations for solo guitar.

Octal Book Two (Clean Feed CFG 004) finds Mr. Sharp on his Koll 8-string electro-acoustic guitar, which has both conventional and bass guitar strings. Without overdubs he creates a kind of suite of guitar events, each concentrating on various avant and conventional techniques that Sharp uses. Some he has developed in his own way; others, like harmonics, feedback sustain, and hammerings, he adapts to his own purposes.

What distinguishes Sharp's music from some other unaccompanied solo avant guitar efforts is that each event to a lesser or greater degree concentrates on a melodic cell, scalular passage or quasi-riff. The music is freely articulated but not free in the stream-of consciousness manner. It is Elliott's strong sense of structure that gives the listener clear musical sign-posts through the avant sound thicket (at least that is so for me). Each is a semi-miniature impro-compositional gem. He does not eschew repetition, and much of the music features dynamically invigorating cascades of rapidly articulated repeated lines. This of course is a feature of Elliott Sharp's style and it is paired down to a single solo voice for this outing.

It shows that Elliott Sharp's motor-sensory brilliance has in no sense abated. He is vital still.