IMPROVISATION

I've chosen the sonic environment of the electric guitar as the best improvisational tool, largely because I've played the instrument most of my life. The problem is that so have most of humanity, at some point in their lives, some very well indeed, so you have to find your niche. There's the sound of the instrument and the effects then there's what you play on it with your fingers. I tend to seek out gradients of tension and small changes in texture and density that gradually reshape the whole. The guitar is treated less as a conventional tune making instrument and more as a source of shifting timbres, drones, harmonics and accidental sounds. I rely upon repetition, silence, noise and burying complex polyrhythms drawn from African and Asian musics deep into the texture.