If you are a fan of drones and ambient, you should by now know the name Aidan Baker. I think he is the person who appeared the most on Merchants Of Air in the past year, and with good reason too. After all, he is one of the most active and influencial musicians today.
So when we were planning our Songs With Stories series, Aidan Baker was one of the first people we asked. We wanted to know who inspired him. Soon after we received this nice list, a list we were very curious about.
Aidan: Of course, it's hard to choose just any five songs as favourites or important or influential...so I'll narrow this down to five guitar songs that are both favourites and personally influential to my musical techniques and methods:
Sonic Youth - Lee Is Free
"Goo" was the first Sonic Youth album I heard, back when it came out in 1991, and it prompted me to hunt down their earlier albums. And while "Daydream Nation" and "Sister" usually get the accolades, I connected more with "Bad Moon Rising" and "Confusion Is Sex," particularly the latter. "Confusion is Sex" is raw and heavy and noisy, dark and aggressive, almost punk, but filtered through an avant-garde, art-rock aesthetic. It's a weird album and not an easy listen...and then the last song, "Lee Is Free," comes along, a droning, ambient track of chiming guitars that is simultaneously prettily melodic and darkly discordant, eerie and beautiful, an almost surprisingly peaceful way to end an otherwise noisy and aggressive album...
"Goo" was the first Sonic Youth album I heard, back when it came out in 1991, and it prompted me to hunt down their earlier albums. And while "Daydream Nation" and "Sister" usually get the accolades, I connected more with "Bad Moon Rising" and "Confusion Is Sex," particularly the latter. "Confusion is Sex" is raw and heavy and noisy, dark and aggressive, almost punk, but filtered through an avant-garde, art-rock aesthetic. It's a weird album and not an easy listen...and then the last song, "Lee Is Free," comes along, a droning, ambient track of chiming guitars that is simultaneously prettily melodic and darkly discordant, eerie and beautiful, an almost surprisingly peaceful way to end an otherwise noisy and aggressive album...
Bill Frisell - Strange Meeting
Frisell has recorded several versions of 'Strange Meeting,' and while I like this version with Dave Holland and Alvin Jones, the version from his album "Live" with Kermit Driscoll and Joey Baron is my favourite (closely followed by the version from "Rambler" -- neither of which are on Youtube). This song too has something of an odd juxtaposition of darkness and light, a shuffling rhythm overlaid with a simple, lilting, almost charming melody tinged with melancholy and yearning. I think I first heard Frisell on John Zorn's "Naked City" album, which a friend of my father's gave me when I was a teenager. Apart from a few tracks, this is a fairly chaotic and frenetic album...but Frisell's uniquely liquid style and sound shone through Naked City's jazz-thrash and prompted me to pick up some of his own albums. And his mix of jazz and rock styles with experimental and looped/processed sounds, his combination of the lyrical and the abstract, his languid style of playing, I found very compelling.
Frisell has recorded several versions of 'Strange Meeting,' and while I like this version with Dave Holland and Alvin Jones, the version from his album "Live" with Kermit Driscoll and Joey Baron is my favourite (closely followed by the version from "Rambler" -- neither of which are on Youtube). This song too has something of an odd juxtaposition of darkness and light, a shuffling rhythm overlaid with a simple, lilting, almost charming melody tinged with melancholy and yearning. I think I first heard Frisell on John Zorn's "Naked City" album, which a friend of my father's gave me when I was a teenager. Apart from a few tracks, this is a fairly chaotic and frenetic album...but Frisell's uniquely liquid style and sound shone through Naked City's jazz-thrash and prompted me to pick up some of his own albums. And his mix of jazz and rock styles with experimental and looped/processed sounds, his combination of the lyrical and the abstract, his languid style of playing, I found very compelling.
Justin Broadrick - Guitar Four/Infinite
"Pure" was the first Godflesh album I heard -- I had never heard the band when I bought the album, I bought it on a whim...don't really remember why -- but I was soon converted and started hunting down the rest of Godflesh's releases. Then, the completist in me coming out, various other releases and projects from Godflesh guitarist, Justin Broadrick...many of which were pretty difficult to find. So, when I stumbled across copy of "Skinner's Black Laboratories" (a split with Andy Hawkins from Blind Idiot God) in a delete bin in some giant music store in New York City, I quickly grabbed it. And while, I must admit, the first few tracks of the album didn't really do so much for me, when that fourth track started, 'Guitar Four/Infinite,' with its slowly arpeggiating pattern and droning bass note, I was immediately transfixed. The track moves so slowly through quiet tones and sounds, still recognizably guitar, but whispery and drifting, gloomy and melancholy, and with a certain sense of wistful hopefulness floating amidst the gloom...
"Pure" was the first Godflesh album I heard -- I had never heard the band when I bought the album, I bought it on a whim...don't really remember why -- but I was soon converted and started hunting down the rest of Godflesh's releases. Then, the completist in me coming out, various other releases and projects from Godflesh guitarist, Justin Broadrick...many of which were pretty difficult to find. So, when I stumbled across copy of "Skinner's Black Laboratories" (a split with Andy Hawkins from Blind Idiot God) in a delete bin in some giant music store in New York City, I quickly grabbed it. And while, I must admit, the first few tracks of the album didn't really do so much for me, when that fourth track started, 'Guitar Four/Infinite,' with its slowly arpeggiating pattern and droning bass note, I was immediately transfixed. The track moves so slowly through quiet tones and sounds, still recognizably guitar, but whispery and drifting, gloomy and melancholy, and with a certain sense of wistful hopefulness floating amidst the gloom...
James Plotkin & Mark Spybey - Vord Lae
As a fan of James Plotkin's weird electro-prog-metal (or whatever you want to call it) band OLD, I was, as with Broadrick, compelled to hunt down Plotkin's other releases and albums to which he had contributed. I like a lot of Plotkin's solo releases (and wish he would release more) but "A Peripheral Blur" with Mark Spybey (from Dead Voices On Air) is definitely my favourite. It is difficult to say whether I like the opening track, 'Jute Wheel,' or 'Vord Lae' better...'Jute Wheel' is quite beautiful, in an aching sort of way, with a melodic passage looping resolutely through drifting drones and textural, ambient grit...'Vord Lae' is, in comparison, much more minimal and darker, gloomier, unnerving even, with its slow pulsing sounds and deep tones. It is perhaps this very minimalism that makes 'Vord Lae' so enthralling to me -- that so little happens, that its evolution is so subtle...yet it still retains an emotional depth and resonance which is, I find, actually quite moving and affecting...
As a fan of James Plotkin's weird electro-prog-metal (or whatever you want to call it) band OLD, I was, as with Broadrick, compelled to hunt down Plotkin's other releases and albums to which he had contributed. I like a lot of Plotkin's solo releases (and wish he would release more) but "A Peripheral Blur" with Mark Spybey (from Dead Voices On Air) is definitely my favourite. It is difficult to say whether I like the opening track, 'Jute Wheel,' or 'Vord Lae' better...'Jute Wheel' is quite beautiful, in an aching sort of way, with a melodic passage looping resolutely through drifting drones and textural, ambient grit...'Vord Lae' is, in comparison, much more minimal and darker, gloomier, unnerving even, with its slow pulsing sounds and deep tones. It is perhaps this very minimalism that makes 'Vord Lae' so enthralling to me -- that so little happens, that its evolution is so subtle...yet it still retains an emotional depth and resonance which is, I find, actually quite moving and affecting...
Frank Zappa - Pink Napkins
This probably seems the odd track out in this list...and certain I'm not much of a fan of Zappa's 'Titties 'n' Beer' kind of songs. Which was all I really knew of Zappa for some time until, when I was living and going to school in Montreal in the early 90s, a friend played me "Shut Up N' Play Yer Guitar," along with some of his other instrumental work, and I came to appreciate Zappa as a guitarist. "Shut Up N' Play Yer Guitar" also, as something of a 'cut-up' album, a collection of guitar solos excised from the framework of their original songs, intrigued me conceptually. And 'Pink Napkins' is one of the few tracks on the album that really works as a stand-alone track, even if it too is an excerpt, and an alternate version -- mellower, more melancholy -- of Zappa's 'Black Napkins'. Perhaps the very fact that I can use emotion-based adjectives to describe this song makes it a stand-out on the record -- a stand-out for much of Zappa's work, which is arguably more cerebral (or goofball) than emotional. And 'Pink Napkins' is a prettily sad song, a wistfully (I'll use that word again) yearning guitar solo over a slowly churning bass-line and softly shuffling drums...
This probably seems the odd track out in this list...and certain I'm not much of a fan of Zappa's 'Titties 'n' Beer' kind of songs. Which was all I really knew of Zappa for some time until, when I was living and going to school in Montreal in the early 90s, a friend played me "Shut Up N' Play Yer Guitar," along with some of his other instrumental work, and I came to appreciate Zappa as a guitarist. "Shut Up N' Play Yer Guitar" also, as something of a 'cut-up' album, a collection of guitar solos excised from the framework of their original songs, intrigued me conceptually. And 'Pink Napkins' is one of the few tracks on the album that really works as a stand-alone track, even if it too is an excerpt, and an alternate version -- mellower, more melancholy -- of Zappa's 'Black Napkins'. Perhaps the very fact that I can use emotion-based adjectives to describe this song makes it a stand-out on the record -- a stand-out for much of Zappa's work, which is arguably more cerebral (or goofball) than emotional. And 'Pink Napkins' is a prettily sad song, a wistfully (I'll use that word again) yearning guitar solo over a slowly churning bass-line and softly shuffling drums...
