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All About Jazz CD Review: 29 Pieces for the Microtonal Guitar Live at Knitting Factory New York - "Sten Hostfalt takes the rigid confines of the Guitar and transforms it into an instrument capable of exploring the minute spaces between traditional notes by using altered tunings, mechanical preparations and electronically enhanced techniques. The result, 29 Pieces for the Microtonal Guitar, is an intriguing recording that shows just how far an instrument can be bent and altered to meet a more experimental and adventurous need, taking you on a journey to a place where rules, quite simply, don't exist and anything is possible. For those with ears broad enough to allow for the possibility that music can extend beyond the expected, and expand the potent boundaries of experience, 29 Pieces For The Microtonal Guitar Live at Knitting Factory New York constitutes a trip well-worth taking. William Burroughs once wrote "exterminate all rational thought" and, while there is an unquestionable logic behind Höstfält's work, it is so rooted in the unusual as to have the appearance of complete abandon." - John Kelman 2004
Jazz Now CD REVIEW by Kenneth Egbert 2005: 29 PIECES FOR THE MICROTONAL GUITAR LIVE AT KNITTING FACTORY NEW YORK " Not for the faint of heart, but more for those of us who think that the late great David Tudor got a bit 'easy listening' towards the end, and Derek Bailey may very possibly be the God that others of us thought in the 1960s Eric Clapton was. Utilizing Joe Maneri's Micro scale "Alive on the Dead Screen" shreds and distort over a droning, howling background while "Icons" quick-picks through a seemingly decaying landscape. Beyond rapturous. "Dialogue" from the 'Lighters' suite pits Höstfält improvising against a tape of himself from an earlier timeframe, very sharp and 'on point', while the 'Major Changes' sequence moves more into John Fahey territory - with well-thought-out and absorbing results. In fact this entire 40-minute live recording from the Knitting Factory NYC (8-29-02) reaches that peak early and stays there with very little difficulty. Certainly one advantage of using a microtonal scale is that you will get new runs of notes, new chordal matrices. For an illustration note, "Roll", last section of the suite "Eight Variations" a furtively smooth run of cacophonous tones that fit together only because Mr. Höstfält and the listener want them to. High-density, highly logical in a completely different way and highly recommended " |