Elliott Sharp - Octal: Book Two (2010)

Elliott Sharp does it seriously when, in the notes on this cd defines this music as ‘purely digital’ which means simply produced by his fingers. Any plectrum, any help from the electronics, just a touch of reverberation, some compression, the E-Bow and as source of declared inspiration the book “Warped Passages” by Lisa Randall on the post-quantistic physical. Sharp is alone with his eight strings guitar/bass and rides its elettro-acoustics vibrations with great ability, imagination and excellent skill technique. We can imagine here the whole pleasure of a musician who explores, investigates, discovers new roads, new inherent possibilities in a new and innovative instrument. Its instrumental rides are exciting and jagged, never amorphous or inconclusive. Every technical detail seems completely under control and the free music flow reserves surprises behind every curve, especially if we have the courage to listen to this music loud. As for the precedent Book One it would be better and interesting to understand the mix among composition and improvisation that it is at the base of this album. At the same I’m fascinated by the executive techniques and the tuning (Eb, Bb, Eb, Bb, E, Gb, Bb, Eb) created by Sharp, a true teacher in the art of the innovative strategies applied to the mechanical and musical possibilities of the guitar: the tones stratifications put under a lens of enlargement the peculiarities of the triad represented by the performer, the instrument and the amplification. The seven tracks (Graviton the Boson; Revelant; Fluctuation of Horizon; Sequent; Eukaryon; P-branes & D-branes; Inverted Fields) are like a sort of celebration of the potentialities of the electrified guitar in the circle of avant-garde and creative music, a point of comparison with which other similar works will necessarily have to compare with. An original and coherent records, dense of suggestions and always projected in the future, things that we always expect from a musician endowed with a strong personality as Elliott Sharp.