Cam Deas - Quadtych

Volume Two of the Quadtych series is here now. I'm guessing that's the final part as an accompanying CD has landed with both parts on so all you digital guys and gals can get on board the Deas bus! But I'm listening to the LP cos LP's are best.... I remember volume 1 of this being quite difficult and volume 2 appears to be more of the same. Long drawn out guitar pieces which veer from the more strummy end of things to long sustained notes with little variation. I can hear a lot of Derek Bailey as it straddles the more experimental end of the solo guitar dudes workshop here. You get two difficult pieces of music which will reward you greatly if you can master them. Personally I prefer the strumming over the delicate plucking but I reckon there's plenty here to keep you occupied if you're into man and guitar!

Clint wrote of Volume One:

However good this could be, there'll be no comparison the stop- start animation Phil has just shown me. 40 today and finally he unleashes his inner creative genius - he did this himself you know:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-P7u4-R68M

Anyway back to the 'music' - we are all waiting with baited breath now that we've heard the guy tuning up for 10 minutes whether he will actually get round to playing a chord. It doesn't seem so. Instead we get solo guitar improvisations that slowly build and mutate to spectacularly atonal rhythmic strumming that comes very early in what I'm told is a 70 minute piece. Excitement over it goes back to plucking. Whether this is wonderfully improvised sonic exploration or just plucking about depends on your viewpoint I suppose. Fans of Derek Bailey, experimental ends of Jack Rose or John Fahey may well get in a tizzy about this but for us its just a little too abstract to keep the attention over two sides of vinyl.