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A
guitar player and "instant composer", the forty-something
Luciano Margorani has been professionally active since the eighties,
first with the "Rock In Opposition" group called La1919,
then as a solo artist. Maybe given the present times - which could
be charitably defined as being "not very favourable" to
the kind of music he plays - he has decided to stick to a CD-R-based,
home-made label, BoZo. Which is a pity, really, since an album like
Solo Concert, which he released last year - simplifying a bit:
echoes of Fred Frith, a homage to Phil Manzanera, a pinch of Fripp -
would have deserved many more reviews than those made possible by
its "virtual" status.
A problem that should not apply to My Favorite Strings, an album of
duos that's at times quite brilliant. These are long-distance
collaborations with guitar players who are stylistically quite
diverse - and the fact that the album sounds good as a whole, as a
listening experience, speaks volumes about the many virtues of
Margorani, some of which are maybe not so apparent at first (besides
playing an assortment of guitars, Margorani is also featured on
basses, loops, sampled drums and various devices).
My Favorite Strings could in a way be said to be the sequel - the
Volume 4 - to the Fred Frith-initiated series called Guitar Solos,
which was for many a revelation when it comes to names and
approaches way off the beaten path. Here the list of participants is
long and prestigious: we have historic names like Derek Bailey and,
from the U.S.A., Eugene Chadbourne, Davey Williams, Elliott Sharp,
Henry Kaiser; we have Nick Didkovsky of Doctor Nerve and Mike
Johnson of Thinking Plague; Wädi Gysi from Switzerland; and from
Holland, Frank Crijns of Blast. There's a little group of
Italian colleagues: Angelo Avogadri, Giorgio Casadei, Franco Fabbri,
Roberto Zanisi, Roberto Zorzi. In truth, I think that some cuts that seem to go nowhere in particular -
for instance, Astéroïde B 612 and Jimmy Il Fenomeno - would have
been better left on the cutting floor, since they could bore the
listener, usually not very keen when it comes to the "miscellaneous
CD" category.
And that should be a pity, since this album has many winning tracks.
Starting with its literal starting point, A Little Walk With Tomba,
with an exuberant performance by Gysi. The rhythmically jumpy
Incontri Casuali, with Crijns, is quite beautiful. Also beautiful
are the Frithian arias of Sogni Ad Occhi Aperti, with Avogadri. It's
quite easy to find traces of Chadbourne in The King Of Parmesan and
of Mike Johnson in the post-prog of City Circus. An elaboration of a
track by Derek Bailey that had already been released on Solo Guitar
Improvisations, Vol. 2 (1992), Mr. Jack Russell easily demonstrates
Margorani's musicality: here he brings to the surface some
harmonizations and counterpoints that were potentially implicit (can
we say "present in absentia"?) in the original guitar solo
- which I obviously had fun listening to again after listening this
version. I'd call Didkovsky's contribution on Half Awake, Half
Asleep "quite stimulating, of course".
Closing the CD, as a bonus track, we have Would You Prefer Us To Lie?
- a song written by Chris Cutler and John Greaves that Henry Cow had
played live in 1977-78 but which is still unreleased on record. Here
Margorani plays all the instruments, while the vocals (in a way
quite reminiscent of Dagmar Krause) are by Carla Sanguineti.
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