Frank Schultz, lap steel guitar & bowed banjo)
Frank SCHULTZ: Bolson
Frank SCHULTZ: Sloot
Frank SCHULTZ: Blether
Frank SCHULTZ: Throstle
Frank SCHULTZ: Furls
Frank SCHULTZ: Stilb
Frank SCHULTZ: Telsons
Frank SCHULTZ: Lithos
Frank SCHULTZ: Intones
Frank SCHULTZ: Botnet
Stickfigure Recordings
Release Date: June 30, 2023
Format: Digital Audio Download and Stream
Duration: 64:44
Jon Ciliberto | 3 JUL 2023
Musical improvisation (which I consider an aspect of all composition and performance rather than of a distinct quality) finds individual variety in instrumentation. Physical instruments favor immediacy, while composition and electronic devices tend to favor planning and consideration.
Of course, there is rarely a well-defined line between anything in art-making, and most musicians — whether playing acoustic instruments or electronic ones — when improvising, occupy a territory from highly practiced technique to nearly abstract. Frank Schultz, one of Atlanta’s great practitioners of improvisation on physical instruments mediated by electronic devices, has a new solo recording of works performed on bowed banjo and lap steel. Blots was released through local favorite Stickfigure Recordings on June 30, 2023.
“Blots” cover design by Michael Hunter for Catcher in the Eye
The improvisations were recorded between May 2022 through January 2023. Some are played live, with electronic processing to create multiple voices from the single performance. Others follow the same form, but with a second improvised part subsequently layered on top of the first. Several have rhythmic elements (looped or played), and these also derive from the two stringed instruments. Beyond clearly string-based sounds, various percussive tones appear — one can strike a guitar (or banjo) in all manner of ways. Thus one hears mbira, bells, and more industrial metal strikes in the generally lopping rhythmic elements.
One form that appears throughout the release is a drone layer (or more than one), atop which Schultz adds elegiac bowed or picked solo playing. In “Bolson,” the former shows an emotional vulnerability: the occasional scratchy irregularities set against a pulsing octave motif.
By contrast, most tracks (“Sloot,” “Blether,” “Stilb”) are spacious with a lack of the gritty sonic evidence of a bow scraping a string. Enveloped in cathedral reverb, the physical aspects of a rosined bow against steel strings are hidden. Some aspect of electronic music is always this escape or transcendence of materiality. “Lithos” and “Botnet” bring in some cutting dissonance.
Probably people put bows to guitars more properly plucked long before Jimmy Page (or Nigel Tufnel), the technique yielding a sustain that suits drone-based music especially and answers the plucked player’s yearning for a note that rings on and on. Glissandi abound.
Frank Schultz plays bowed banjo. (courtesy of the artist)
According to Schultz, the song titles “are anagrams generated from the album title, Blots, and another word that changes from song to song, but is related to each song.” The titles were chosen “from the pool of words provided by the anagram generator, based on how they looked, sounded and their definition.”
A patient listening quality appears when one encounters Schultz’s music, not in terms of “I am impatient because I don’t immediately know what is going on here,” but rather a willingness to allow ideas and forms to unfold gradually. ■
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- Frank Schultz – Blots on Bandcamp: dftals.bandcamp.com/album/blots
Read more by Jon Ciliberto.
RECENT POSTS
In the wake of Hurricane Helene, the Atlanta Symphony delivers poetic Mahler and powerful Shostakovich • 03 Oct 2024
Breaking barriers: flutist Adam Sadberry honors civil rights legacy, brings his powerful music to Spivey Hall • 02 Oct 2024
.png){kind=logo}