Please contact jimsande@hotmail.com for more information on purchasing "Tensile."

    "Tensile" is an international experimental acoustic guitar anthology. This is a truly stunning collection of music. The CD was produced by Michael Farley and Jim Sande. 17 music artists from Canada, Germany, New Zealand, The United Kingdom, and The USA are represented on "Tensile." Listen to The Kind Sound of Molecules 5 one of two CD contributions by Jim Sande

    The musical styles on "Tensile" cover a large ground. Many of the artists utilized computer processing, recording, and effect techniques in conjunction with acoustic guitar. On several pieces the sound of the guitar is dominant, in others the sound of the guitar is dissected into a personal atmospheric sound, and in others there is interplay between acoustic guitar and computer processed guitar layerings. Also there is prepared guitar ala Cage, guitar with delay to create singing long sounds, Olaf Rupp's virtuostic free improv style on classical guitar is like a raging waterfall of sound, Gydja's piece brings you into a mythological dark forest where nature surrounds.

    There are multitracked pieces, and pieces with butterfly like fragility. Jliat has contributed an instant 30 second classic where acoustic guitar is sited in postmodern tension. Adan Baker's work is described as soul nourishing. This is a CD for visual artists to work by, it will challenge you musically, and it is still the expressive acoustic guitar at its core. The artists are:

Aidan Baker
Greg Davis
Olaf Rupp
Jliat
brekekekexkoaxkoax
Living with Eating Disorders (LWED)
Mark Mclaren
Cody Oliver
Bill Jarboe
Glen Bach
Dale Lloyd
Gydja
Will Soderberg
Michael V. Farley
Bill Jarboe & Phil Thomson
Jim Sande
Blunderspublik

    A review from Vital Weekly #385.
TENSILE (CDR compilation by Labile Music)
This is a handsomely packed CDR release (organised by Jim Sande and Micheal V. Farley) with nineteen pieces of all sorts of acoustic guitar playing. One that is in a totally different vein then the CD I reviewed in Vital Weekly 380. First of all these pieces are much shorter, ranging from thirty seconds to just inder six minutes, and secondly the pieces need not be limited to just guitar. So we have somebody like Greg Davis, who plays acoustic guitar, but feeds the signal through his laptop and max/msp patches and offers a great, intense piece. On the total opposite we find Olaf Rupp, who continues with his frentic playing, just as on his 'Scree' CD (see Vital Weekly 341) - a work of total free improvisation. Somewhere in between are the thirty conceptual seconds of Jliat. Most of these people stay in similar areas as Rupp, the improvisational aspects - people like Brekekekexkoaxkoax, Jim Sande or Bundespublik. More processed pieces are by Living With Eating Disorders (is this bandname a sick joke on Vini Reilly, I wondered), Mark McLaren, Cody Oliver, Bill Jarboe, Glenn Bach, Dale Lloyd, Gydja, Will Soderberg, Micheal V. Farley and Aidan Baker. With the latter, more expanded range of players being a majority here, this is much more a compilation of 'acoustic guitar plus...' compilation and not one that is 'strictly acoustic guitar'. But the results are equally nice - most of these people stay on the smooth side of things - the acoustic guitar, even taken out of its campfire element, is still an instrument to play moody tunes with - even when plugged into a laptop. (FdW)

Back