Catching Up with Reid Karris – Avant Music News

Chicago-location improviser Reid Karris has been constantly fast paced launch-wise over the past 10 years. The pandemic may perhaps have slowed him down a bit, but not significantly. Concentrating on guitar, percussion, discipline recordings, and sculpted seem textures, Karris commonly stays on the outside the house – the much exterior. His improvisations are streams of consciousness, working with prolonged approaches and geared up instruments, some of which he designed.

Underneath, we review a handful of his most the latest releases.

Reid Karris – We Enter the Circle Just after Darkish and Are Consumed by Fire (2022 Ramble Information)

The four tracks on We Enter the Circle Just after Darkish and Are Consumed by Hearth were formulated from recordings Karris built taking walks around his studio in 2021. He manipulated these in different approaches, stretching and compressing them in time. Some of the first supply content stays discernable (these types of as a passing train early on), but most survive as textured drones. More than this, he layered electric guitar improv, in his signature disjointed and feedback-laden manner. Some passages are outright peaceful, if not for Karris’s metallic manipulation of his guitar’s overall body and strings. Towards the conclude, he emphasizes identified-item percussion as well. The all round end result is chaotic but not overtly in your facial area.

Reid Karris and the Gentleman from Atlantis – Onomatopoeia (2022 Ramble Documents)

In this article we have Karris collaborating with Ramble Documents label head Michael Sill, the latter calling himself the Gentleman from Atlantis. Karris recorded percussion tracks built with skatchboxes and parts of metallic, then passed them off to Sill. To these, Sill included acoustic, electric, and slide guitar, as nicely as voice. Sill is a substantially a lot more structured participant than Karris, and his contributions approach currently being tuneful. They have a folks truly feel, even when he employs his electric in a gritty and overdriven manner. But this work continues to be far from an uncomplicated pay attention, with Karris actively playing amplified implements, cymbals, and bells with minimal repetition or sample. So even though there are a lot of melodies to latch on to, they not often past and are usually concealed behind noisy improv weirdness.

Reid Karris – Solo Guitars 2021 (2022 Bandcamp)

This is a massive enterprise. During the COVID lockdowns and semi-lockdowns of 2021, Karris invested a single Friday a thirty day period in his studio recording and live-streaming prepared guitar improvisations (not unlike his Solo Guitars launch of 2020 recordings). Right after a 12 months of executing so, he experienced 45 tracks and more than 8 several hours of songs, all of which are on this release. He also posted video clips of the sessions on his YouTube channel. Consequently, this album can be watched as very well as listened to. Karris laid his instrument flat on a desk, despatched its output by several consequences pedals, and proceeded to use resources and other implements to scratch, saw, mute, and usually manipulate the strings although changing the knobs of the pedals. At instances he brings out a next guitar to hang close to his neck and play in only a slightly a lot more anticipated manner. An unconventional strategy to be guaranteed, but unusually listenable in all of its peculiarity.

Asker – Tacet (2022 Mother Brain Data)

This collaboration features Karris on geared up guitar and percussion, Alexander Adams on drums, Seth Andrew Davis on electro-acoustic guitar, and Kevin Cheli on drums, vibraphone, & percussion. As may possibly be anticipated if you are common with the previous works of each personal in the lineup, Tacet is a noisy and dense established of relentless open-ended improv. One particular of its a lot more notable facets is that it was recorded remotely, with Karris and Adams in Chicago, Davis in Kansas Town, and Cheli in Ithaca, New York. The quartet handed close to tracks until they every single experienced contributed to all of the pieces. Soundwise, the percussion skitters and rattles, though the guitars are spiky with major processing. Davis provides up angular soloing at a pair of points, which only serves as distinction to emphasize how unorthodox this album is as a entire.