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SuperTexture by Gary Smith | |||||||||||||||||||
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 SuperTexture by guitarist Gary Smith is a two disc set of 13 electric guitar improvisations and 13 collaborations with contemporaries. The first disc, Smith's solo work, is pure guitar and amp. The second disc features guests exploring each improvisation through their own interpretation. Smith's previous work ranges from elegant tremolo guitar with the Bill Fay Group (1978), to his own rock-oriented "stereo guitar" and noise. A common theme in Smith's work is an attempt to somehow challenge the way the guitar is used. SuperTexture could be considered a climax to this progression, as Smith has chosen to discard every available tool except the guitar itself. 13 Solo Guitar Improvisations draws you into a lucid and unpredictable world. Attempting to find patterns and predict the course of Smith's discourse is only natural, but there are so many reasons to become distracted. The prolific repertoire of techniques will humble most guitarists, and the aesthetic influences will keep everyone else pondering. Perhaps this is because the guitar is inescapably important to modern culture: familiar sounds from rock, blues and jazz are almost allowed to escape, only to crash in on each other like waves on a beach. Smith sees the poetry in the noises that are usually discarded from most guitar recordings. He layers these "extra-musical" sounds by combining them gently but rapidly. By drawing upon the guitar's innate ability to produce both rhythmic and melodic sounds, Smith produces something fluid and translucent. This approach has been likened to pointillist paintings, yet the end result is superficially more similar to glitch and many laptop-based improvisers. Starkly contrasting with the first CD is Treatments and Interpretations CD, in which artists connected with Gary Smith use his improvisations to produce a new piece. For some it appears to be a source of influence, others weave in an out of it, and the rest tear it apart searching to express something else. For example, Bill Fay's Pear Tree Tomorrow seems to converse with the original material in a delicate and thoughtful manner, whereas Paulo Raposo's Handful Of Sand transforms it into something totally new. J Train by Tianna Kennedy, a New York-based cellist, is one of the more satisfying mixes. Kennedy's work and approach are naturally suited to re-imagining Smith's work, in a way that complements the original piece. The dense ambient explorations in Apple Thief by BJ Nilsen are also notable. Nilsen captures static slices of the original source material inside familiar ambient drones. And in Unravel by Charles Hayawrd we find an amazing take on the rhythms found in Smith's original work. Despite being aesthetically very different propositions, 13 Solo Guitar Improvisations and Treatments and Interpretations form an inseparable whole. Exploring and digesting 13 Solo Guitar Improvisations is incredibly personal -- listening to Treatments and Interpretations makes the experience feel shared. Review by Alex Young
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