Album Notes

Roger Kleier, an experimental guitarist, is an important part of New York’s downtown new music scene. His music has been called “Impressive stuff!” by The Wire. He regularly performs and records with established, leading-edge musicians, including Kato Hideki, Ikue Mori, Phill Niblock, Marc Ribot, Elliott Sharp, Carl Stone, John Zorn, and others.

Kleier seduces listeners by mutating his guitar in various ways, ranging from the hallowed techniques of Jimi Hendrix and Captain Beefheart, through the extended techniques of avant-garde guitar-mangling, to the recent technological innovations of sampling, layering, and digital sound processing.

Elliott Sharp writes that this “bittersweet record” has music where “drones melt into lyrical melody,” where “the sweetsour wistfulness of detuned chords, existing completely outside of any European tonal sensibility, morphs into geological mass,” and where “gradual processes and the sensuality of the rich timbres” draw the listener “deeper and deeper” into “full immersion.”

The music on this brooding, elegiac CD reflects strong emotional associations of the composer. For example, The Juan Cortina Suite was inspired by a legendary 19th century outlaw, revered for combating injustices against Mexicans. The tense opening work and the haunting concluding work were inspired by an Ilya Ehrenburg World War II quote: “We speak of deep night, and we speak of deep autumn - when we speak of Stalingrad, we will speak of deep war.”