Name: Four Guitars Live
Brand: Bill Orcutt

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

PLIA80.1

Colour

Black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music US

Limited edition

Release date

2024-03-22

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier US

Tax rate US

Sales:8.875

UPC / Barcode

843563172933

Total Cap

Black LP

Artist

Bill Orcutt

Genre US

Rock

Label US

Palilalia

Bill Orcutt is a guitarist based in San Francisco, California, USA. He is best known as the former guitarist and founder of the noise/punk rock duo Harry Pussy (later a trio).
Orcutt's unique style and approach to playing the guitar have made him a respected figure in the music industry. His innovative use of unconventional techniques and his ability to create raw, visceral sounds have earned him critical acclaim.
With his solo work, Orcutt continues to push boundaries and explore new sonic territories. His performances are captivating and intense, leaving audiences mesmerized by his skill and creativity. Whether it's through his powerful improvisations or his intricate compositions, Orcutt's music never fails to make an impact.

PALILALIA

Newest Listed Items

"As Bill Orcutt's most mature and exhilarating LP to date, Music for Four Guitars was a slab of undeniable Apollonian beauty. It's approachability and obvious novelty landed it not only on the year- end lists of every key-pushing codger in the underground in 2022, but also on NPR in the form of the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet, an ensemble assembled to perform this music and featuring Wendy Eisenberg, Ava Mendoza, and Shane Parish in addition to Orcutt. But while their Tiny Desk Concert gave a whiff of the quartet's easy intimacy, the sterile confines of the virtual recital medium still left a puzzle unsolved: how might these brutally mannered bricks of minimalist counterpoint sound on a stage in front of actual breathing bodies?""This was the question foremost in my mind when I first saw the quartet in San Francisco a few months before this double live LP was recorded. I was already familiar with the prowess of Eisenberg and Mendoza, two of the most technically intimidating shredders to blast out of the noise/improv underground, and knew Parish as the mastermind behind the epic translation of Orcutt's quartet recordings into a fully notated score. I was ready to be 'blown away'-and I most assuredly was. The quartet navigated Orcutt's jaggedly spiraling right angles into the shining core of the compositions with joyous ease, faithful to the originals in nearly every way (though their tempos were slightly ramped up, Blakey style, to communicate their breathless rush). The renditions were flawless, stellar and inspiring. I had expected nothing less.""Which leads us to this album, Four Guitars Live, recorded in November of 2023 at Le Guess Who? festival during the quartet's first European tour. The true essence of this set is not simply in it's faithfulness to the source compositions, but in the group's easy familiarity (no doubt the result of weeks on the road) and the generosity of their improvisations, both collective and solo. Orcutt, clearly cognizant of both the caliber of his collaborators and the singularity of their voices, has given everyone room to stretch out, and all have delivered some of their most moving passages to date.""One of this record's great thrills for me is imagining a listener, perhaps unfamiliar with the outer limits of contemporary guitar improvisation (or the Tzadik catalog), slammed into catatonia by Mendoza's liquefying lines on Out of the corner of the eye, then revived and healed by the languid, breathy lines of Parish's unaccompanied, spaced-out breakdown of the track's main theme, finally only to be crushed by Eisenberg's staggering extended solo on Only at dusk (somehow channeling both Eugene Chadbourne and Buck Dharma).""There's another peak, which begins at the end of side B, in Orcutt's own languid solo, encapsulating the flowing focus of his recent solo LPs, and serving as an introduction to the next side's ensemble tour de force, the psychic heart of the album, On the horizon: it's melodic core passing first to Orcutt, launching into a sublime solo turn by Eisenberg, a duo of Parish and Mendoza, before parachuting back into the ensemble for a smashup rendition of Barely visible and Glimpsed while driving (renamed Barely driving) knitted together with an softly bubbling ensemble improvisation. The transfer is orchestrated yet seamless, it's tonal form undeniable even in the presence of obvious dissonance.""The breadth of Four Guitars Live gives lie to the false notion that agile, polytonal improv is necessarily without soul, is necessarily inaccessible. Rather, Four Guitars posits a human avant-garde music that the most conservative will recognize as virtuosic and revel in it's classic intervals, boiling counterpoint, and precisely- layered facets. Even the rockers in your life might dig it, so why not pass it on?"-Tom Carter

Four Guitars Live

Music US

Discover Four Guitars Live by Bill Orcutt on PALILALIA. A double live LP showcasing mesmerizing guitar improvisations by a talented quartet.