♫♪  Rob Magill - “Dream the Fear Away”

Bandcamp tags: experimental guitar loop music looping loops Los Angeles

The basics: This is one 30-minute solo guitar track, with an almost aggressively straightforward sound, as it seems he just plugged straight into the amp and went for it. I can’t tell if Magill’s playing style hints at a formal musical training, or just a really free, yet restrained (oxymoronic, but IDGAF) way of moving about a guitar neck (i.e., the dude doesn’t resort to cliches, but isn’t just jerkin’ off Malmsteen-style either). It’s great here; the incredible range of sounds he’s able to generate just from a guitar and an amp (really just a loop pedal, using all parts of the guitar percussively as well as melodically, including tasteful use of feedback). In short, the sounds are positively unpredictable from one minute to another.

Of course, I gotta give into the temptation of making some artist-comparisons, so I’ll say that for a minute there something reminded me of Sur-era Susan Alcorn, at least in the sense that neither are afraid to use negative space to their advantage, or feel the need to disguise with fx-pedals the fact that we are listening to a guitar here, y’know. Or make a bee-line right off the deep end, if that’s what the situation calls for, which it frequently does. Maybe just the faintest hint of Richard Bishop in there too. And do I sense a metal phase somewhere in Magill’s past?

Here you have a pretty fucking A+ use of loop pedal, if indeed that’s what’s being used. A keen reminder to the post-Mark-McGuire solo guitar scene (no shade) that there’s more possibilities in a loop pedal than colorful harmonies and rhythmic layering. For the most part, you forget that you’re listening to a loop pedal and just get lost in Magill’s endlessly creative flow.

“Dream the Fear Away,” apparently the sole track of the album Guitar Thing is a solid start to Weird Cry’s Loop Series. Visit the Weird Cry Bandcamp for a full download.

• Rob Magill: http://rob-magill.bandcamp.com
• Weird Cry Records: https://weirdcry.bandcamp.com

Chocolate Grinder

CHOCOLATE GRINDER is our audio/visual section, with an emphasis on the lesser heard and lesser known. We aim to dig deep, but we’ll post any song or video we find interesting, big or small.

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