The Library of Babel of the guitar, how many different “Walk My ways” can you create with a six string? On #neuguitars #blog
ORBIT577 — 577 Records & Forward Festival
Nick Vander (vandersilence.com)
“You can find here 50 very personal and unique approaches to the guitar. And for making it more particular, I asked the participants to play a solo oriented piece. So you should and you can, walk the way of each one, enter in their musical worlds. If you see the list of participants and where they come from, that may add something to the listening.
So Nick Vander, the curator of this crazy collection of 5 CDs, replied to my questions about how the idea for this project was born.
A mammoth project, a real music library dedicated to the world of improvised guitar. There is something to bother Borges and the guitar pantheism. The figures are enough to do it: five CDs, 48 tracks, 49 guitarists involved, 32 different nationalities, 6 continents. In these CDs there is the world.
They have also been a direct and unique way to react to COVID. The first cd was proposed on Bandcamp on January 2nd 2021 and the last one on May 1st. It takes incredible enthusiasm to face a similar effort, from a recording and distribution point of view, and Orbit577, an independent label born twenty years ago from an idea by Daniel Carter and Federico Ughi, with its free approach has lent itself purpose. Take a look at their website and you will discover a desire for community.
We were talking about Covid. The Walk My way project is the perfect demonstration of how relationships are the hard currency of creative exchange. These 5 CDs show a temporal connection with indie rock, 80’s hardcore and the art scene. Normally punk rockers don’t ask to be taken seriously, these 49 guitarists, yes. They ask to be taken seriously as a form of artistic expression.
The physical closure imposed by Covid has pushed towards other forms of indirect relationships. A reaction to the provincialism of small personal scenes and a push to broaden one’s horizons, while at the same time presenting one’s own personal style.
But who are the musicians involved in the end? The list is long: Nicola L. Hein, Daavarjal Tsaschikher, Alan Courtis, Marco Cappelli, Elliott Sharp, Hery Ujjaya, Killick Hinds, Gilbert Isbin, Nick Vander, David Stackenäs, Jessica Ackerley, Jorge Espinal, Usui Yasuhiro, Scott Fields, Sebastian Sequoiah-Grayson, Marco Oppedisano, Sam Shalabi, Shinobu Nemoto, Nyctalllz, Sergio Sorrentino, Christian Vasseur, Charbel Haber, Misha Marks, Henry Kaiser, Nick Ashwood, Emil Palme & Taus Bregnhøj-Olesen, Sharif Sehnaoui, Colin Robinson, Martin Huba , Janet Feder, Martin Vishnick, Ikbal Lubys, Edward J. Gibbs, Joshua Weitzel, Guram Machavariani, Eric Wong, Garth Erasmus, Bill Horist, Harvey Valdes, Antonio Guillen, Boris Belica, Ryan Edwards, Denis Sorokin, Arvind Ganga, Pengboon Don , Josue Amador, Todd Clouser and Mohammed Ashraf. Some I already knew, well-established names in the world of improvisation and experimental music, but others sounded completely new to me, opening up possibilities for me to explore in the coming months.
“This compilation of experimental guitar players was inspired by the curiosity to know what active musicians were creating in the present moment. Recorded in the midst of a pandemic and a global lockdown, and in contrast to an overwhelming amount of bad news, this project posed the possibility of a uniquely collective gathering, that might not have been possible otherwise. This project brings together musicians across generational, geographic and musical distances, united around a single instrument: guitar.” All true. What are you waiting for? Buy and download from Bandcamp. There is a world to discover, there is a lot to do.
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