This special bundle collects the two recently issued albums by acclaimed experimental percussionist Will Guthrie, including his latest collaboration with Jean-Luc Guionnet:
Will Guthrie "People Pleaser - Pt. II" LP
Will Guthrie / Jean-Luc Guionnet "Electric Rag" LP
Will Guthrie "People Pleaser - Pt. II" LP
A singular exercise in Will Guthrie's discography, “People Pleaser”, a series initiated in 2017, sees the Australian partially put down his drumsticks and wear a producer cap for a result offering a resolutely singular perspective of / on his work with a very personal dimension. On the first volume, with a cover signed Stephen O'Malley sets the tone by diverting the chamaré Warhol influenced visual of the album “Unit Structures” by Cecil Taylor. The portrait of the free jazz pianist has been replaced by passport photos of Guthrie. The result is a diversion into a fairly “Pop” aesthetic whose musical content works in a fairly similar way.
Four years later, the cover art's undertones are slightly darker and Guthrie hasn't aged a bit on his new passport photo. The twelve tracks of this second “People Pleaser” combine and arrange field recordings, heady loops, twists, musical quotes stuck on bedside records, recorded moments captured during travels, ghosty voices from low-fi lands, a police interview tape and imagined exotic sounds ... Guthrie could walk us for hours on his hard drive like looking at a photo album but he chose to build pieces based on this very personal sound material, much like a mixtape, with special care given to how sounds articulate, overlap and collide. He thus invites his heroes and his friends to join him in skilfully chiseled and finely edited imaginary jams.
The first to take pleasure in this “People Pleaser” is undoubtedly its author as some of his finds are enjoyably playful; we are there embarked in an addictive sound patchwork at high speed where a Balinese Squarepusher is propelled via a defective cathode ray tube in a temple where the happy marriage of the saxophone and the gong is celebrated before this too short respite is interrupted by a sustained hip hop rhythm. The multiplicity and variety of sources give the whole a very pop format and the way in which Guthrie combines sounds, textures, rhythms and vocal elements quickly takes on a narrative dimension and poses this exercise between hip hop and a very personal plunderphonic, evoking as much J Dilla or RZA as the irreverent inventiveness of People Like Us or Wobbly.
Will Guthrie has never been in as good company as on a solo album, he also lists on the cover the list of friends, heroes, members of his family and countries who inspired him and to whom he pays homage / collage on this new disc; An aesthetic exercise apart in his discography, both infinitely personal and self-centered and resolutely turned towards what animates him, the aptly named “People Pleaser” reveals the music DNA of the Australian and can be listened to on repeat.
Will Guthrie / Jean-Luc Guionnet "Electric Rag" LP
* Edition of 300 * Maxed out and burning hot nasty, Electric Rag brings together the electric organs, electronics and alto sax of Jean-Luc Guionnet, with the closely amplified drums and percussion of Will Guthrie.
After years of playing together in the minimalist pointillist free jazz noise core trio The Ames Room (with Clayton Thomas on bass) Electric Rag offers up another point of view on a musical history of nearly 15 years of playing together.
The 8 titles of Electric Rag draw on their various experience in electronic music, free improvisation and experimental sound research, however the music is deeply rooted in their love of jazz, in its most potent, aggressive and antisocial form.
