Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Walking Features

How Long Has That Been Going On? (17 megs)
Dissolving Faces (5 megs)

Here's a pair of short clips from a mid-July sit-in with the Walking Faces at TAIX in LosAngeles. Happily, my short trip lined up perrrrfectly with 5-track and Patrick's show, and they seemed gullible enough to let me sit in for the whole night! I could go on forever about my fantastic experience learning the tunes, meeting their wonderful friends, and just soaking up the vibes down there that weekend, but for now I'll just focus on the recordings at hand:

Both of these are improvised movements that emerged around the middle and then the end of a dense set of Walking Faces material. Listeners with a passing familiarity with my playing might think that at least half of the stellar combo-bass/guitar work here is me, but that's all Five! I'm the second guitar of washes and sparse-ish angular lines that peeks out occasionally with a flurry or two. To me, I sound a little tentative here. Perhaps I'm worried that I'll miss the reintroduction of a composed bit, or perhaps I'm waffling back and forth between attacking with my hyper-tenderized fingers and the pick that I hadn't used in 15 years. (Since this trip, I've really fallen back in love with that tiny bit of plastic technology, but that's a story for another time...) Regardless, Patrick and Five are monsters of awesomeness throughout and the trio-effect is ever so sweet in certain spots here!