lunedì 20 luglio 2015

Review of FootHills Jam by VEAD, 2010


Fretless guitar is such a curious instrument. It seems such a simple thing seeing it, but when you feel it under your fingers and you start to think about it you understand that it is not an easy thing. Remove the keys is not a simple aesthetical matter, behind those metal barrettes there is a world, a logic, a tradition and a forma mentis that you can’t find anymore suddenly on a smooth keyboard.
The difference is mental, visual and tactile, disappeared the tonal points of reference we are opened to new possibilities and logic that this record well shows. Till now this guitar has been only appanage of improvisators: who other could begin play on it? As always when it’s necessary to map new territories we sent the explorers who start to draw some summary maps and trace new points of reference, behind of their then will come the professional certifiers and cartographers, but at the moment the available musical materials are the solos and the few improvisations often immortalized by the video available on youtube recorded during the Festival of the Guitar Fretless that is annually held in New York.
Till now few are those people who have begun to play it, I quote the tutelar names of Elliott Sharp for USA and of Simone Massaron in Italy.
This records starts an operation of documentation, inside you will find rigorously all improvisations for fretless guitar and bass and for percussions. The guitar plays curious, the ear has to find its way to orient in a microtonale sea, the music is strong, raw and impassioned, this is a curious, pleasant and stimulating cd.
There is not only music but also some extracted by recordings of lectures on fretless guitar that with a lot of humor and so much passion talk of the characteristics of this guitar and invoke loud much more interest from the composers and a news notation’s system created for the characteristics of this instrument.
I recommend it to everybody: opening our mental horizons is always a good thing!


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