What I’ve Been Listening to in October: Hardcore Electric Frontiers of Bill Orcutt
If you follow me on Instagram, you know I’m always bumping into new guitar geniuses then tossing them into a daily Insta-story salad.
I’d never heard of Bill Orcutt until a telecaster guitar algorithm grabbed my earballs. Probably because he just released a live version of his absolutely defining composition, "The Four Louies," on Bandcamp which melds the Kingsmen’s inexplicable “Louie Louie” with Steve Reich’s “Four Organs.” Wonderful maximalism for four guitars if ever!
So, yes, the dude is wild, pushing guitar into new, intense frontiers. To categorize his sound I’d say it’s kind of in the vein of experimentally improvisational punk-jazz-blues. But categories are counterproductive – even that old catch-phrase avant-garde.
Orcutt operates on numerous levels and in many styles. His electric projects are often tooth sharpening dentist chair fugue exercises, or maybe like stepping into an escape room full of jagged glass. Much of his work emanates from a four-string telecaster (he does not use the A and D strings). He does acoustic projects as well with what have to be super strong, calloused hands along with a fearless string attack that allows him to rustle up hardcore levels of natural sound at times (also with only four strings) rivaling the tooth-sharpening glass fragment edge of his tele projects.
No matter what, one of the best things about Orcutt is how eclectic and unpredictably intelligent his compositions are. You’ll find some truly wild noise play in albums like Music in Continuous Motion and his guitar quartet recordings. Made Out of Sound is right up there with any interesting experimental jazz rolling around these days. And yet, on the album Jump on It, we find him doing beautiful, soulful acoustic work that could be found on a Windham Hill compilation.
My favorite find has been his How to Rescue Things album where he overlays samples of mid-20th century gospel string recordings with fearless tele rejoinders. The effect positions our modern angsty slash-away-at-everything irony on top of the hopeful sound elixir of the one-time innocent gold-lit city on the hill. The music is jarring, hilarious, and utterly appropriate if you get yourself to sit with it (which I’m doing right now).
Orcutt’s up to something important, pushing the limits of all of the genres I described above – experimental, punk, jazz, blues, etc. For me, the ultimate beauty of this era of music history is the infinite brilliance created by expanding our expectations of electric guitar sound and harmonics – whether we're talking punk-jazz-blues or cosmic ambient cowboy.
I had a core question way back when, as I began writing Sound Effect Infinity. Not: “Where are we going with all of this new music?” More like: “How magnificent and brilliant can musicians become by sound alone?”
Bill Orcutt’s work doesn’t fully answer that question, but it certainly makes it a valid one for everyone to pay attention to.
For “The Four Louies” go here: https://fakeestates.bandcamp.com/album/the-four-louies
And here’s a good Spotify place to start if you want to hear more: This is Bill Orcutt