New Solo Guitar Records by Alan Licht and Joe Morris

Singularity Joe Morris (Aum Fidelity) Tis the season for solo guitar records, apparently. Here's a pair of 'em, courtesy of two of the premier marksmen of the trade. On the one hand you have Alan Licht, who, with Love Child and Run On, played some of the most telepathically blitzed-out mind-melt in recent memory. The solos in songs like "What It Breeds," "Know It's Alright" and "Double Gemini" were like the next step in the language created by Lou Reed on "I Heard Her Call My Name," Robert Quine on Blank Generation and even Edward Van Halen (whom Licht acknowledges as an influence). He's also recorded a shitload of "free" guitar-skronk-drone-annoy-your-neighbors documents with such collaborators as Rudolph Grey and Loren MazzaCane Connors, so you know he's equally at home with the artier factions of New York nightlife. I wouldn't be surprised if he's crossed paths with Joe Morris, another ax handler who's run the gamut of styles and settings and who pretty much exemplifies the freedom path as well. As the most important jazz guitarist since John McLaughlin, or maybe James "Blood" Ulmer, Morris has played with all of the luminaries of the current free-jazz milieu and his work with his own quartet had an effect similar to taking a greased coyote and letting him run through a slalom of electrically charged icicles.

On Singularity, Morris still lets his hands run wild, but since he's playing a steel-string acoustic, the results are a more laconic affair. Consisting of 10 concise compositions, Singularity has an almost noirish feel in its sparse solitude. At times Morris evokes a trio of turtles fighting for plankton in the hull of a garbage barge adrift in New York harbor. Other times, he's busy plinking about with Leo Kottke-style fandangos or flailing away at hatchet-handed boleros. All and all, this is the best acoustic LP since Craig Ventresco's The Past Is Yet to Come.

As for Alan Licht, don't expect him to be doin' an acoustic album anytime soon. On Plays Well, Licht may be going mano-a-mano with his instrument, but he's still got it fully wired for sound. Consisting of two tracks, there's nothing "mere" about this record, which is probably one of the most extreme noise documents you're likely to hear in this post-Metal Machine Music universe. Licht's hero was always La Monte Young and his thing has always been the drone, which here he takes to new lengths.

The first track, "Remington Khan," recorded live at NYU in November 1997, starts off as an almost "Tubular Bells"-like solo piece before being filtered through the triangular prism of Jerry Garcia's mercurial picking on "Dark Star." About 14 minutes in, Licht starts to add some more oceanic Velvets textures. For the next 10 minutes or so, you get one of the most astounding examples of solo guitar playing in recent memory with Licht alternating between technician and terrorist. As the piece winds on and on, he unfurls more progressively atonal bursts, culminating in a startling moment at 30:02 when he abruptly switches to subatomic outboard motor sounds that carry the piece for the remainder.

Believe it or not, that's only the beginning. The second track, "The Old Victrola," is even more startling. The name is the tip-off: this track is a merger of two performances, recorded on two separate occasions five years apart. On the one hand, there's Licht's usual guitar sputter, which I'm going to presume was the bit recorded live at Lounge Ax in November '95. On the other, there are such "found sounds" as Captain Beefheart and Donna Summer, which I'm gonna presume is the section recorded at the Transmissions Festival in July 2000. Beginning with what sounds like a recording of "Well" from Trout Mask Replica, Licht starts to hammer out a typically pounding staccato riff. If you've ever fantasized about what it might've sounded like if the Velvets had jammed with Beefheart, this is about as close as you're gonna get. But that's nothing?if you thought the previous track shifted textures abruptly, wait'll you hear how Licht cuts this one in half, juxtaposing an endless tape loop of Donna Summer's "Dim All the Lights" with more sonic sizzle. I guarantee, no matter how many times you've listened to it, it'll still trip you up. This kind of expectation-damning sniggery sums up Licht's esthetic in a nutshell.