Search - Various Artists :: 156 Strings: Nineteen Totally Original Acoustic Guitarists

Not without strings attached

Lee Hartsfeld | Central Ohio, United States | 08/17/2002

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Highly musical, and often highly monotonous, compositions on a highly listenable CD. Only a couple of the "new artists and sounds" peak the pain meter in terms of sheer repetition and/or annoying sonorities, though nearly everyone displays an inadequate sense of form. Maybe this is the current fashion in modern composition--to ramble and fumble around. Compiler Henry Kaiser, who is featured on track 8, goes on and on in the liner notes about the newness of the music, but much of it is utterly derivative of early-20th-century Classical music, modally and harmonically. "Modern" devices like the whole tone scale and dissonant intervals (especially the tritone) are often featured almost for effect alone. Still, given a choice between New Age dreck and "156 Strings," I'll take this collection in a heartbeat. And there are some true gems--in particular, Duck Baker's "Juxta Pose," a skillful and listener-friendly twelve-tone piece whose first chord contains the harmonic and melodic scheme. Baker's playing is phenomenal. Also quite enjoyable is a later track, "Thou Shalt Not Kill," which mimics Bartok even more aggressively, albeit with much less sense of form. Richard Thompson's excellent "How Does Your Garden Grow?" features abstract, Erik-Satie harmony, and "Lullaby Heart Away" is fun, sounding in places like Debussy played on a saw. Be prepared for much guitar-banging, chime effects, and the like, and don't be surprised if a few of the numbers, like Fred Frith's "Access," are little more than a celebration of the tonic chord. I won't attempt to explain the "Virgin Orchestra" track, which would have been more fun at, say, half the length. There's more where it came from, and I can live without more, in this case."