I'm not in love with the guitar as a thing, but it has done a lot of heavy lifting in much of the music I've been listening to for the last fifty years. I recently came across a trio of guitar releases on Bandcamp with enough analogous elements that, if I worked for the NME in the 1990s I'd probably stick a flag in them and call it a microgenre.
Cyrus Pireh has been described as 'the best guitarist in the world (not by me, I don't believe in those sort of absolutes). On Thank You Guitar, he ably demonstrates his virtuosity with a set that provides a series of complex, delicate insectoid structures. My favourite track? Infinite Shred, the heaviest offering, which is only marred by not being several billion minutes longer.
From Portland, where a disproportionate amount of the music I buy now seems to originate from, Guitar For Deaf Dumb and Blind provide what, under other circumstances, could be a suite of pleasant, ambient noodling. However, it's all off-kilter: too loud, too sharp, too distorted, too much - so it is absolutely impossible to relax to. This is not a problem for me, as I haven't really had any downtime since 1980. Favourite Track? Guitar One, an experiment in slowly and deliberately pushing something into the red.
On the same label (Bud Tapes) and also based in Portand, Elli Ott is, by day, a member of semi-psychedelic drone experimentalists, Skunk Ape. When it gets dark, he apparently sits on his porch (all Americans have sittable porches, right?) and strums, thumps, scrapes, thrashes and generally mistreats his guitar to fascinating and disorienting effect. My favourite track? Meditation On Little Black Cat: the soundtrack for an estate agent led viewing of a haunted house.
So, what would I call this microgenre, and what are its antecedents? Doesn't matter, does it? I find that just liking something is enough these days, there's no need to over-complicate it.
