Thursday, December 13, 2007
marco oppedisano
electroacoustic compositions for electric guitar
[2007, oks recordings of north america]
marco is a classically trained guitarist hailing from brooklyn, new york. in addition to his solo work, he's also a member of josh weinstein and the petty alchemy band.
according to oppedisano's bio, he's had experience playing the guitar in a bunch of musical settings: rock and pop, jazz, hiphop, dance music, free improv, music for film and stage as well as taking part in contemporary concert ensembles. while, at times, you can pick up on hints of marco's musical past, for the most part he'll do a good job of not being too schizophrenic with his playing.
nearly all of marco oppedisano's scattershot leanings are confined to two of the disc's longest pieces, and occur within the first three tracks. by and large, he's successful with them. the first of the pair is time lapse. at eleven and a half minutes, this is his longest offering. while the length (and his past musical history) might lead you to think that marco will try to cram a lot into this time frame, he'll only spend a couple of minutes on noisy and affected guitar overdubbing, and then it's back to the warm droning ambiance and complimentary panned sounds. the last four minutes switch to multiple layers of a cleaner guitar sound, culminating in a shimmering strummed finale. the nine and a half minutes of karmicom are a bit weirder. here's where his balance of different aspects becomes a little skewed. most of this track is great, but part of it kind of sinks it. first the good. it opens up with a great repetitious plucking sound as its base and panned all around it are various other noises and brief, beefy electric guitar power chords, along with other affected guitar licks. that sounds good, mostly because the infectious foundation, but, unfortunately, the second half will completely abandon that as he will add choral female voices, which will also get affected, and really, it sounds awful. if the last part was a necessity, it definitely should've been broken down into two tracks since the complete sound of karmicom was ruefully ditched once past the midway point.
after the three short electronic pieces (one minute a piece) trilogy, things start looking (sounding) a lot better. i attribute a majority of the success to the fact that he'll stay a narrower course. steel sky is built around warm drones and marco's occasional delayed guitar and feedback enrich the piece of music as it all comes together much more organically. limbo is even narrower in scope, forgoing all dissonance for a slow, pendulum-like drone. the pace, as well as the colder feel, make limbo stand out from the pack; the bells during the latter minutes were lovely, too.
the final ten minutes belong to the four-parter, scenes from dante's inferno. the first two tracks, the dark wood and eternal lovers capture marco at his somber best, with the latter being my favorite piece of music on the disc. most of what's good about it happens in the first minute with the exchanges between a great background drone and memorable guitar playing. it's the only time (at least that i remember), where a pattern of chords emerged, versus a pattern of drones. it's short-lived, and soon eternal lovers reverts to mournful free-form playing, but affected enough to mask the sound. still a good song. the last two works are brief, but pleasant, experimental pieces, with the squeaky guitar chord fuckery of the alchemists being the standout.
the tracklisting on the cd includes the year of each piece's (or movement's) conception and the best tracks, in my opinion, all came from 1999 (scenes from dante's inferno), 2000 (limbo) and 2001 (the unmentioned, but excellent, opener, frozen tears). the later, up to 2005, tracks are the ones where he got more creative, trying to employ a broader range of sound within each composition, but i tend to prefer oppedisano's music, here, when he's not spreading his focus out as much.
Eternal Lovers
@ the monkey, nyc; 2/17/07
[2007, oks recordings of north america]
marco is a classically trained guitarist hailing from brooklyn, new york. in addition to his solo work, he's also a member of josh weinstein and the petty alchemy band.
according to oppedisano's bio, he's had experience playing the guitar in a bunch of musical settings: rock and pop, jazz, hiphop, dance music, free improv, music for film and stage as well as taking part in contemporary concert ensembles. while, at times, you can pick up on hints of marco's musical past, for the most part he'll do a good job of not being too schizophrenic with his playing.
nearly all of marco oppedisano's scattershot leanings are confined to two of the disc's longest pieces, and occur within the first three tracks. by and large, he's successful with them. the first of the pair is time lapse. at eleven and a half minutes, this is his longest offering. while the length (and his past musical history) might lead you to think that marco will try to cram a lot into this time frame, he'll only spend a couple of minutes on noisy and affected guitar overdubbing, and then it's back to the warm droning ambiance and complimentary panned sounds. the last four minutes switch to multiple layers of a cleaner guitar sound, culminating in a shimmering strummed finale. the nine and a half minutes of karmicom are a bit weirder. here's where his balance of different aspects becomes a little skewed. most of this track is great, but part of it kind of sinks it. first the good. it opens up with a great repetitious plucking sound as its base and panned all around it are various other noises and brief, beefy electric guitar power chords, along with other affected guitar licks. that sounds good, mostly because the infectious foundation, but, unfortunately, the second half will completely abandon that as he will add choral female voices, which will also get affected, and really, it sounds awful. if the last part was a necessity, it definitely should've been broken down into two tracks since the complete sound of karmicom was ruefully ditched once past the midway point.after the three short electronic pieces (one minute a piece) trilogy, things start looking (sounding) a lot better. i attribute a majority of the success to the fact that he'll stay a narrower course. steel sky is built around warm drones and marco's occasional delayed guitar and feedback enrich the piece of music as it all comes together much more organically. limbo is even narrower in scope, forgoing all dissonance for a slow, pendulum-like drone. the pace, as well as the colder feel, make limbo stand out from the pack; the bells during the latter minutes were lovely, too.
the final ten minutes belong to the four-parter, scenes from dante's inferno. the first two tracks, the dark wood and eternal lovers capture marco at his somber best, with the latter being my favorite piece of music on the disc. most of what's good about it happens in the first minute with the exchanges between a great background drone and memorable guitar playing. it's the only time (at least that i remember), where a pattern of chords emerged, versus a pattern of drones. it's short-lived, and soon eternal lovers reverts to mournful free-form playing, but affected enough to mask the sound. still a good song. the last two works are brief, but pleasant, experimental pieces, with the squeaky guitar chord fuckery of the alchemists being the standout.the tracklisting on the cd includes the year of each piece's (or movement's) conception and the best tracks, in my opinion, all came from 1999 (scenes from dante's inferno), 2000 (limbo) and 2001 (the unmentioned, but excellent, opener, frozen tears). the later, up to 2005, tracks are the ones where he got more creative, trying to employ a broader range of sound within each composition, but i tend to prefer oppedisano's music, here, when he's not spreading his focus out as much.
Eternal Lovers
:: posted by avant gardening, 12:33 PM
3 Comments:
Marco absolutely kills. I have this album and can't recommend it enough.
Thanks for that excellent review. Marco is one of the best creative guitarists around.
gtroblq.com
gtroblq.com
Thanks so much for reviewing Marco's excellent CD-R, as usual we at OKSRNA really appreciate the support for our label.
-OKSRNA
-OKSRNA