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PRESS: Metzger is well-known for his modified banjo improvisations and compositions, but Maccaferri plays host to Metzger's deconstruction of strings. Rather than elegantly thought out pieces of fingerwork, the two tracks herein are the noodlings, scrapings, and pokings of a man extracting the sounds only the 4-year old in us could explore. It's the jubilant fun of picking up a guitar or banjo without knowing a note and moving your fingers across its frets as if you were typing or tying a shoe. St. Paul's hermit string-bender I delivers the banjo from bondage. By Bill Meyer When Paul Metzger gets on stage, the first things that catch your eye are his instruments. The 49-year-old St. Paul, Minnesotan's banjo has a twelve-string guitar headstock and a stegosaurus spine's worth of tuning pegs clustered between one and three o'clock on the instrument's body, which give it a full complement of 24 strings. His guitar sports a cymbal stuck onto one end; extra strings fan outfrom a second bridge, and perched above the sound hole are the naked innards of a couple music boxes. But once he sits down and starts to play, sounds trump appearances. Maybe he'll coax a slender tendril of sound from his rounded axe with an e-bow, drag sarangi-like cries from it with a real bow, or pluck a sunrise melody from it, each note bright and present for a moment, then gone. He could tug an impossibly low note from his guitar and sculfJt it into waves that you'd expect to wash from the shores of the Ganges, not the Mississippi, or loft a barbed, higher pitch through a lattice of randomly evolving music box tones. His dizzying improvisations can sound as splintered as a Derek Bailey standard demolition, as heavy as a punk rock rave-up, and hypnotic as a Hindustani raga, but he's more interested in seeing where his ideas and instruments take him than he is in evoking any particular influence. In fact, Metzger's acoustic music is the product of decades of solitary exploration. "I developed my style on my own in my little hermit world." Sitting in a Chinese restaurant before a recent gig in Chicago, he explained its evolution. "My first guitar playing was acoustic, I started as a finger-style player, listening mostly to Duck Baker and also Django records, and had my influences: North Indian music, jazz standards and the experimental thing. I was never interested in rock and roll music. This would be like mid 70s, you know? I was a very isolated guy and didn't know all the stuff that people who know about music knew about at that time period, like the Sex Pistols, but I didn't know anything about that. But then I saw the Replacements on local TV, right after their first album, and I just adored it. So I had a short period of emulation with the electric guitar, and that grew into getting back to what I had to say musically." TVBC, the now-disbanded rock group he originally formed with a brother and a cousin in 1979, gigged sporadically in Minnesota for over two decades. The trio's penchant for extended improvisation attracted some passionate admirers, but also ensured that they never fit into the Twin Cities' rock scene. Metzger simply assumed that his solo efforts would be even less popular. "I worked on my acoustic music at the same time, but kept it as an at-home thing as it became more and more experimental. I always assumed that no one would want to hear my acoustic playing." So he didn't bring it into the public eye until 2002, when he played the first DeStijl festival, and didn't make his first acoustic records until 2004. Those two albums, a solo guitar effort entitled Paul Metzger [Mutant Music] and Three Improvisations on Modified Banjo [Chairkicker's Union], introduced both the essential format and the dominant discourses in Metzger's music. Their winding pieces build up the same kinetic frenzy as a raga, but don't adhere to raga form. "That's what it kind of sounds like," Metzger admits, "but I'm not in any way trying to emulate that scene." Rather than follow a prescribed path, Metzger treats his open-ended compositions as vehicles to get lost. "To stretch things out and have a chance to make some mistakes, that is important to me. And to take a lot of chances, to not stay in a comfort zone. Within improvisation, you kind of know where to go, but I've always strived to find something else besides what I'm comfortable with." While Metzger generally brings both the guitar and ban/'o to his gigs, his choice to keep them fairly separate on record reflects the to and fro process by which he develops his music on each. "I approach it like being a painter and having a couple canvases that I'm working on. I take the one that I'm less satisfied with and work on that, and then the other one becomes less satisfactory." He's set to record two guitar records in the months ahead, but 2007 was a banjo year that yielded two splendid new LPs. Gedanken Splitter [Roaratorio] is ferocious, frantic, yet entirely on-course--easily Metzger's most aggressive waxing yet. The title track to Deliverance [Locust], on the other hand, may be his most eloquent and ambitious performance. It earns its halfhour length with a series of dark ruminations upon an exceedingly durable melody. The name nods, of course, toward the movie that introduced the world to "Dueling Banjos," but also attests to Metzger's missionary zeal for his round axe. "In my opinion the banjo is really in servitude, shackled down by very traditional art forms. A lot of them I really like, but I love the sound of the banjo so much, and it's so limited in its application. It's a bit of a shame, you know? I mean a guitar, that's all over the place. It doesn't need any help. The banjo needs a lot of stinking help. It's locked in tight." . Entirely improvised, tangled with traces of raga, blues, flamenco and folk, Paul Metzger’s Deliverance extends and reinvents the possibilities of the humble banjo. Metzger’s instrument is heavily altered, with a dozen extra strings and a sitar bridge. It reverberates and bends notes in a way that has little to do with the flat, plainspoken tone of traditional banjo. Yet it’s a lovely sound, akin in its complex dreaminess to the wooden-guitar pyrotechnics of Jack Rose or Richard Bishop. Metzger seems to be playing two, or even three instruments in opener “Orans,” the high strings pinging a rapid-fire melody, while the lower ones building a scratchy storm of strums. “Bright Red Stone” is slower, more melancholy, bluesier, its ghostly tones and overtones hanging wispily over darkness. Metzger even turns his banjo, briefly, into a chamber instrument, as mesmeric violin-like bowing ushers in the title track. It's somewhat surprising that, despite being fraught with violence and
emotional tension, John Boorman's 1972 Deliverance is best remembered
for the image of a creepy inbred kid with a banjo and the simple melodic
opening of "Dueling Banjos," the song made famous by the scene.
Naming a record of solo banjo Deliverance 25 years later is something
Paul Metzger couldn't have done unawares, but while the album's title
might contain a nod to backwoods American folk tradition, its music
taps into something more exotic. Metzger makes use of a rustic, roughly hewn Americana, to be sure,
but Deliverance echoes just as frequently Indian ragas and other Eastern
music traditions. The net effect is that of familiar sounds arranged
in unfamiliar ways, a meditative strain that straddles genres effortlessly,
in the end Metzger's music comes off naturally enough that attention
is diverted from the specifics of his stylistic modes, with the music
itself the focus. Many musicians can make music from a grab bag of influences,
but it takes something more to do so in such a way that the conceptual
act is overshadowed by the performance, and Metzger has done just that.
Deliverance moves from meditative to fiery with ease, and it's this
fluidity of intensity that is one of the album's best traits. And while,
such as on opener "Orans," the soft to loud, slow to fast
progression can be predictable, the spirit with which Metzger plays
renders any such concern feeling superficial, at best. It isn't surprising that his banjo doesn't sound like what we expect,
given that it looks like a mutant of its traditional form, modified
heavily by Metzger to create a 21-string monster, sometimes bowed, sometimes
plucked, that makes use of sympathetic drone strings a la some manner
of alien sitar. But the novelty of his instrument isn't Metzger's primary
appeal. In the end, it's the pathos of Deliverance that is at the album's
core: the beauty of whirling melodies; the feverish successions of notes,
climbing ever higher; and, ever present, the impassioned spirit that
imbues it all. That a solo banjo record would be one of 2007's best
was a bit of a surprise, but Paul Metzger has proven himself rather
adept, to say the least, at thwarting expectations. A virtuoso on a myriad of stringed instruments, Minneapolis-based experimental/progressive
folk artist Paul Metzger focuses much of his creative energy on his
21-string modified banjo. A student of both Eastern and Western traditional
music, Metzger first appeared on a split album that featured guitarist
Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance) and lauded improv drummer Chris
Corsano on one side and Metzger's unique improvisational guitar work
on the other. He released the full-length Three Improvisations on Modified
Banjo for Chairkickers Music in 2005, followed by Deliverance for the
Locust label in 2007.
Anyone who makes an album of solo banjo recordings and then calls it
Deliverance is just asking for trouble. Presumably Metzger's larking
around with us a bit there, because in truth this is no porch-mounted
rocking chair noodle-fest, but rather a measured, meditative study of
Metzger's own self-modified 21-string banjo performances, which have
more in common with the revamped ragas of John Fahey and his fellow
Takoma luminaries than any traditional, countrified usage of the instrument.
Metzger takes his music far closer to the source than most open-tuned
raga explorers, with some far-flung eastern harmonies that border on
sitar drone and a furious picking technique that sounds quite unlike
anything so humdrum as a banjo. By the time Metzger arrives at the final
phase of his half-hour long title piece you'll find yourself thinking
you're hearing some kind of advanced shamisen workout, characterised
by a flurry of high speed, unsustained string plucks. It's impressive
enough that Metzger should be a virtuoso of any instrument, but the
very fact that he's mastered something he made himself as a one-off
is even more remarkable, and consequently Deliverance is a pretty unique
listening experience. Maybe more than any other modern American instrument, the banjo is
subjected to stereotypes; and for most modern/progressive music fans,
derogatory stereotypes. Its tinny, twangy sound is almost synonymous
with the Appalachian Mountains of the United States, a region that was
once revered for its gorgeous landscapes and insular culture. Then came
along a little movie by the name of Deliverance in 1972, in which the
portrayal of the mountainous Georgia wilderness was, to put it lightly,
creepy and disturbing. And maybe the most instantly recognizable scene
of the film features a mentally-challenged hillbilly youth named Lonnie
whose rendition of “Dueling Banjos” pretty much forever
condemned the banjo to be associated with that eerie, uncomfortable
setting for most of the movie’s viewers. On top of that singular
pop culture event, the instrument is almost unanimously linked to the
bluegrass and country genres. The history of the banjo runs much deeper though. In fact, it is a
direct link to Africa’s influence on modern American music. It
is believed that its evolution began when African slaves in the American
south sought to recreate familiar instruments from their homeland such
as the akonting or xalam of West Africa. In the nineteenth century,
similar instruments were used in the blackface minstrel shows to represent
“slave music”, and Joel Walker Sweeney developed its modern
day form in the 1840s when he sought to “remake the banjo into
an instrument for the middle class”. Over the next century-and-a-half,
the banjo would become more and more associated with the American south
with its idiosyncratic sound and eventually be a central characteristic
of bluegrass and country genres that developed along side it. Over the last few decades, the banjo has been utilized more and more
in different musical settings, ranging from the European jazz of Django
Reinhardt in the 1940s to its increasing use in today’s indie-pop
fusions. Minneapolis-based experimental folk artist Paul Metzger is
forcing the instrument into brand new directions, both structurally
and stylistically. His modified banjo is that of Frankensteinian mutation:
the traditional pot-like body stays the same but with twenty-one strings
instead of the traditional five and the elongated bridge of a sitar.
Stylistically, Metzger rarely plucks in the circular, twangy fingerpicking
we are most familiar with this instrument, but plays in an almost modal
raga style with heavy influence from Northern India, Eastern Asia, jazz
and folk. It’s a sound that echoes of Reinhardt, Sandy Bull and
Henry Flynt, but remains insular and idiosyncratic due to the singular
nature of his instrument of choice. The banjo’s stereotypes are not lost on Metzger as he chose to
call his first full-length for Locust, Deliverance, perhaps with a bit
of a snicker and a soft roll of the eyes. Consisting of three tracks
in a nearly sixty minute set, the album features real time performances
of Metzger solely on his modified banjo. The opening number, “Orans”,
is both the strongest of the three songs and the most accessible. Leaning
heavily towards the raga side of Metzger’s sound, he patiently
swirls the styles of Bull, Ravi Shankar, Gabor Szabo and Robbie Basho
into a spellbinding fifteen-minute workout. Metzger’s banjo features
a much heavier low end than the traditional sound of the instrument
and leads the song with a lyrical bass line ornamented with flourishes
of the tinny high end. With increasing urgency as the track proceeds,
he patiently builds the song’s momentum before the last three
minutes’ onslaught of speed-picking up and down the raga’s
scale creating cascades of metallic tones that reminisce of the sitar
but with more of an unsettling nature. The ten-minute “Bright Red Stone” follows. This time leading
with higher pitches, Metzger’s banjo sounds a bit closer to what
you would expect from the instrument, but he rarely settles into any
kind of countrified groove. The lyrical picking of Fahey is there as
well as a modal jazz feel as he experiments with different approaches
to playing a scale, all the while lined with a pulsing redundant strum
that keeps the music from meandering. Finally, the title track runs
for a whopping thirty-minutes. It opens with Metzger bowing his banjo
creating an odd, aching Eastern sound that you might expect on an early
70s Pharoah Sanders release. With much less urgency than the prior two
tracks, Metzger patiently feels out the tune, somehow connecting the
Appalachian Mountains to Northern India and Far East Asia. It may be
tolling for listeners with less of an attention span, but rewards in
its curious fusion of styles and hypnotizing, almost soothing aura. Like most Locust releases, Deliverance is for music fans that want
to furrow their brow while listening to music. With the quickly crowding
school of post-Fahey guitar players these days, Metzger is a welcomed
departure as he looks to expand the reaches of Fahey’s country
ragas not only with a completely singular instrument in his modified
banjo, but in his approach to a more modal style of playing. This is
music to lay back and ponder over. It can at times hypnotize and even
lull, but there is so much curiosity to the sound, it rarely loses your
attention.
Minneapolis veteran Paul Metzger is a very worthy heir to the mystic
throne of late acoustic-guitar shaman Robbie Basho. Using a variety
of retooled banjos and other multistringed implements—not to mention
absolutely stunning technique—he creates sweeping, swirling 21st-century
ragas. Metzger, of St. Paul, Minn., will headline, playing banjo and guitar,
both of which have been heavily modified. The banjo features extra sets
of strings and is set up similarly to a sitar, which is a long-necked
lute with a varying number of strings. "I prefer instruments that
are not precious or fancy or expensive," Metzger said. "I
just feel at liberty to experiment on them. I think 'what if I drilled
in here or added something here.' I don't feel like I'm ruining something,
I just kind of go at it." Metzger's most recent album, Deliverance,
was released in October, and contains three banjo pieces, he said. Metzger
said he doesn't listen to his own recordings, which are done in one
live take, and focuses more on live improvisation. Nathaniel Rasmussen,
a Schlow computer systems administrator, said Metzger "definitely
got extremely emphatic applause when he played here before." Making Waves: Paul Metzger Although produced by Alan from Low, this is not what one might expect
from his label - more the likes of Revenant, Tzadik or Unheard Music.
Three extended pieces for solo banjo that have a melancholic yet authentic
Deep South feel about them... absolutely terrific stuff that fans of
John Fahey simply have to hear! Paul Metzger may just be one of the finest American instrumentalists
alive today. His newest album “Deliverance,” released this
month on Locust Music, is a mind-blowing epic of modified-21-string-banjo
improvisations. Metzger’s skill and genre-defying sound manages
to place him in a realm somewhere far beyond mere-psychedelia, into
the world of universal musical-dialogue, where the mind struggles to
place what it’s hearing, be it Appalachian folk, or Classical
Indian raga, or some sort of progged-out weirdness. Don’t let your definition-biased mind fool you. To simply call
Metzger’s music an “East-meets-West” type situation
would be far too simplistic, and miss the nuances Metzger brings to
his own unique style of playing. There’s something much deeper
at work in his songs, something exciting and frustratingly ineffable.
A quick glace at any of Metzger’s live performances on YouTube
will back up such bold declarations. Better yet, check out any of his
fine records, which include a split with Ben Chasny and Sunburned Hand
of the Man drummer Chris Corsano on Roaratorio. A veteran of the Minneapolis/St. Paul music scene, Metzger played for
a number of years in the cult favorite experimental rock-trio TVBC,
a band that, rather awesomely, released its own soundtrack to the 1929
classic silent film “The Man With the Movie Camera.” I spoke
with Metzger about his decision to play solo, about several musicians
he holds dear, and his composing and recording processes. A beautiful blend of cosmic sounds plucked, picked and strummed by
Paul Metzger -- and every note of it done on the banjo -- albeit a modified
21-string banjo! Metzger delivers us from everyl Americana, jazz and
hillbilly banjo conventions you can think of, but he doesn't sacrifice
melody or listenability the way so many of his modern avant garde peers
do. He sometimes approximates the sounds of other stringed instruments,
from the sitar to the mandolin, and the tunes build to pretty intense
moments. Beautiful stuff! 3 lengthy tracks that run nearly an hour all
together: the 14+ minute "Orans", the nearly 10-minute "Bright
Red Stone" and the 31+ minute "Deliverance". A virtuoso if there ever was one, Paul Metzger received minor attention
after releasing a split LP with Ben Chasny and Chris Corsano. He should
receive quite a bit more for “Deliverance,” his first outing
for Locust Music, as it shines and stuns like little else you’re
likely to hear all year. With 3 long solo improved raga-tunes plucked
and bowed on his very own 21-string modified banjo, Metzger seems to
have grown as a performer since 2005’s (also wonderful) “Three
Improvisations on Modified Banjo.” While that record moved by
a bit more understatedly (while perhaps only in comparison), “Deliverance”
is indeed heady, genre warping (creating?) stuff. That Metzger is able,
both through his instrumental creation and his mind-blowing proficiency,
to bridge a gap somewhere between Eastern and Western traditional music
forms and sounds is no small feat. It’s universal and individual,
and easy to get lost within. While traditional ragas generally require a fair share of patience
to be fully appreciated, the beauty and strength of Metzger’s
compositions are immediate. Ever twisting, changing, and snaking along
into unexplored regions, these tracks don’t require repeated listens,
but definitely reward them in the long run. Metzger can pick, and note
follows note at an almost dizzying pace at times. It’s always
to good effect, however, and no aura of showing off ever comes into
view. Metzger’s ability to simultaneously soothe and stress is a large
part of this disc’s success. The unease and tension present throughout
the album’s middle piece, “bright red stone,” is instantly
allieviated by the sad bowed strains of the title track. And while these
songs are best taken as a complete movement, each one plays like a universe
unto it self, echoing thousands of years of history, and hopefully lighting
the way to a bright future for not only Metzger, but any of us willing
to follow the paths he treads. With 2 more releases on the way, one
of which, to be released on cassette, is “solo guitar improvisations
based on thelonious sphere monk's bemsha swing performed on a plastic
maccaferri guitar with attached cymbal and accompanied by 21 prepared
music box mechanisms.” Deliverance, indeed. 9/10 On "August," his side-long contribution to a recent Roaratorio
split LP with the duo of Ben Chasny and Chris Corsano, Metzger plays
a guitar with a similarly large complement of strings, which he's further
customized with the guts from a couple music boxes--their stark chiming
provides a succinct counterpoint to his dramatic flamenco-style strumming
and swooning slide licks. Ready to purge your ears of holiday music? Try Paul Metzger's improvisations
on modified guitar and banjo. You'll spend a few delightful minutes
trying to pinpoint influences (we spent an hour arguing koto, shamisen,
or tar as if we know yona nuki from raga) before allowing Metzger to
be Metzger and appreciating his "I'll do it my way, thank you very
much" approach to music. Eventually Metzger's guitar grows louder and heavier and by the end Paul Metzger has graced Minneapolis with his guitar and banjo playing
in various contexts for over twenty years, but this is the first time
I've encountered him. On the strength of his side-long performance here,
that's a serious deficit. Many Westerners borrow a few elements from
raga styles, and a few musicians from other disciplines are serious
students of Hindustani and Carnatic lore, but Metzger's guitar playing
sounds like the real thing. And yet it's true to the what-the-fuck spirit
that's motivated the best punk, jazz, and free music of any stripe.
John McLaughlin had his guitar fitted with scalloped frets and sympathetic
strings; Metzger has pimped his ride with music boxes. They somehow
keep up a running dialog with his dramatic strums and swooning slide
licks that sounds so a propos that the word gimmick never finds its
way into the conversation. "August," which also lasts the
whole side, is like a long fading glow, a sunset raga worth returning
to over and over again. Paul Metzger customisé his banjo! In fact it customise all that
it finds banjo, guitar etc… the advantage it is that he makes
use of it well. Its work is based on the improvisation, tinted influences
at the same time Eastern, but also, like Steven R Smith, Slavic connotations.
It is difficult to believe that with a simple banjo one can hold in
breath his listener along more than fifty minutes, but it is what succeeded
in making Paul Metzger, with in more one impressive masterliness. The
notes are connected either at the speed of the flash, or with softness
and touch. Glimmers of hope, or a dark despair you will pass by all
the emotions, by great flights with more intimate passages. In addition
to feeling the great control of the instrument, one notices also the
desire for going to cause the emotion. Its improvisations are not that
a series of notes without logic, for him the principal goal is to be
able to isolate to us from the elements surrounding, to find itself
just opposite this man playing on an adulterated banjo, the eyes plunged
in the vacuum and the nimble fingers. A very beautiful disc of guitar,
to listen with the helmet as much as possible to immerse you in the
beauty of these some notes. By thanking you. What does a modified banjo look like? Paul Metzger added more than
a dozen strings, a sitar bridge and mutated the traditional backwoods
instrument into something rather alien. The sounds that escape from
this modified banjo are anything but alien. In fact, his instrument
resembles a sitar more than a banjo. Highly meditative music, appropriately
enough Metzger chose to record this music inside of Sacred Heart Music
Center, which at one point was actually a church. Mix of folk, jazz,
eastern music, country and improvisation creep their way into his way
of playing. He's a demon one minute - plucking wildly with severe intensity
- while for the next stretch, he'll just pluck single notes. This is
in fact the most satisfying part of the record. Its singular take on
modal structures and harmonic repetitiveness allows the listener to
fall into a comfortable trance. This is not to say the music is dull
in the least. It's just that its greatest strength is an overwhelming
trance-like quality that allows everyone to look inwards. I love the
way he surprises the listener with a mix of paradigm shifts and angular
plucking attacks that appear and disappear at will. This is uncompromising
improvised music of the highest calibre and a personal discovery of
this year so far. For his half of this split LP, Metzger improvises on modified guitar
rather than banjo, adding some tambura, and the results are a delicious
slide into the void. I always dug his group TVBC, but Metzger has discovered
a whole new country with his recent solo recordings. "On the absolute flipside is the reward one gets from spending time with A long slow burning raga woven from buzzing steel string drones, dense and deftly interwoven, over the top, simple Eastern melodies, that also buzz and rumble, and above it all soft crystalline chimes from the modified music boxes, adding a bit of subtle sparkle and dreamy melody to the dark and moody minor key raga-scape beneath. Really cool. ...features some amazing post-Sandy Bull devotional raga that's as skewered and hand-made as anything released by Harry Partch's Gate 5. Metzger plays a modified guitar with a music box and accompanying tambura. Highly recommended. Paul Metzger's "August," an improvisation on modified guitar, fiddles with the high and low ends of an instrument rigged with chiming music box parts and balanced only with stringed tambura. The Minneapolis-based musician recently overhauled a banjo with sitar pick-ups for a similarly spiritualized effect. Here, he flows between folksy lament, minimal harmony, and a trickle of objects to the floor. Intentional or not, it adds percussion. Metzger is the right co-conspirator for the release, even if there's no interaction between the musicians. If only he could reach around to the flip side of the vinyl and add strong picking to the duo's fuzzy miasma. Instead, Metzger closely echoes Derek Bailey's sweetly obscured Ballads—re-arranging familiar melodies into a study, a negative proof of a color portrait. I hope I'm making myself abundantly clear when I say this - this is a very recommended experimental acoustic artifact. ...the resulting sounds provocatively collide traditional American music with North Indian Hindustani music. Metzger creates otherworldly sounds unique unto themselves. His long, elaborate gypsy raga improvisations are skillful sonic meditations that sound both ancient and fresh in their immediacy. Some of the most inventive (and brilliant) playing I've heard in a long time. ... sounds as intimate as a prayer, yet the open space surrounding the musician is practically an accompanist. Paul Metzger added 16 strings (!) to his 5-string banjo in order to play his raga-like music, which can be heard on his release "Three Improvisations on Modified Banjo." The extra strings function mostly as sitar-like sympathetic drones, with a bone bridge to help them resonate. I caught one of Paul's performances recently and was blown away by his trance-inducing 45-minute improvisation. Experimental? Wacky? Paul's combination of strummed, fingerpicked, tapped and bowed playing is banjo picking the likes of which you've never heard. Metzger’s 23-minute opening track begins with distant, flutelike sounds
that evoke a Buddhist temple rising to meet the morning sun. Soon after,
he establishes a line of forceful plucks that get massaged, inverted,
destroyed, and rebuilt. Mixing the rapid-fire picking of Django Reinhardt
with the reverent raga of Robbie Basho, Metzger lets his own pulse dictate
his music’s rushes and retreats. The middle track is almost a
ballad, carving a winding river through a deep, dark forest. Three Improvisations
ends with Metzger’s most ambitious piece—26 minutes of thoughtful
strums and aggressive chords that suggests the amazing sounds here are
just a fraction of the noises filling Metzger’s mind. "It takes a mesmerizing sense of creativity to play a modified 21-string banjo. For one person to simultaneously slap the instrument's base for percussion and use his five other fingers to pepper the high-pitched strings on the banjo's north pole. To extract a chilling thunder from an instrument widely known for its light, chirpy sound. To make one instrument sound like a chamber of harps, bongos, sitars and violins feverishly swaying, skipping, stirring, churning and burning into an unpaved musical frontier. Minnesota musician Paul Metzger did just that. And the footprints his performance left marked the first steps of a new underground live music venue in York County a forgotten and refurbished 100-year-old ballroom in the Red Lion skyline. Once the ears of the world were ready to return to the solo guitar innovations of John Fahey , roughly around the time Rhino released the two-CD retrospective Return of the Repressed , there were a number of players who lined up with guitars in hand to revive his particular style of fingerpicking fusion . Some merely replicated his country blues ragas , others tried to update the sound with laptops or placing a choice phrase within a bigger modern rock puzzle, but few have been able to truly add to the language that he laid out so fully from the late '50s to the early '80s. Three Improvisations on Modified Banjo is one of those few recordings that burns away the brush and forges ahead into new territory. That's not to say that it isn't without precedent. Paul Metzger 's banjo modes include a set of sitar-like sympathetic strings on the body similar to what John McLaughlin did with his guitar in the '70s, and he dips into Eastern raga patterns like Fahey , Robbie Basho , and many other guitarists have too. What does set him apart, other than his chosen banjo, is a patient, expansive sense of phrasing that has few Western peers. The album is made up of three long untitled pieces, the opener and closer each passing 20 minutes with the centerpiece ending just short of ten minutes. The first improvisation opens with soft drawn-out tones, and if it weren't for the occasional string buzz, it would be easy to mistake it for the sound of a wood flute. The other two pieces are more easily recognizable as products of a banjo, with the second drawing from American roots for a spare and relaxed front-porch meditation. The final improvisation draws on Eastern influences with an overlaying raga structure but also displays some moves that would not be out of place on a Andrés Segovia album, or a Derek Bailey recording, for that matter. Masterful and sublime through and through, this is a record that will have more than one day in the sun as it passes from one impressed set of ears to another. "There's enough Midwestern strangeness and unusual attack stub-dangling that you might imagine you were listening to a Rick Bishop album or something." "The music Metzger makes—whether he’s strumming, fingerpicking, plucking or bowing—is unlike any Americana you’ve ever heard. From one moment to the next, Metzger’s banjo can sound like a violin, koto, flute, oud or sarod, and though these three solo improvisations are listed separately, each one flows seamlessly into the next, like one long raga that takes the album’s full 58 minutes to build, climax and fade into silence." "Don't let the title fool you: Three Improvisations on Modified Banjo
is about as far from Deliverance as you can possibly get." "This acclaimed Minnesota-based string musician performs dreamy, meditative, at times ecstatic improvisations on a modified banjo and a fretless guitar fitted with sitar drone strings." "Metzger finds an accessible pulse in an ancient, refined form, and a meditative austerity in an earthy, vernacular one. Then he fuses both elements into glorious, soaring new structures." "Metzger has located a quivering space between the raga open-string drone and the ear-warping harmonic meditations of Tony Conrad, and the combined logic puts us both out of time and right in the body of the misshapen instrument." "Its a very very hypnotic listen as it slowly gains your attention. An album that really needs to be listened to, as any attempts to explain the music will not do it any justice really." "fantastic recital of post sandy bull acoustic trance-inducing psychedelia..." "flute-like at times, others like a mandolin. The best banjo playing ever." "This quiet, gently tangled and explorative disc features an absolute master working at his best. His hypnotizing, circular playing is rich without being overdone, non-violent without disappearing into the background, abstract while retaining deep emotion. As darkly beautiful as your favorite John Fahey record." "It is without doubt that "Three Improvisations On Modified Banjo" is destined to be one of the very best and most essential experimental acoustic releases of 2005." "A release that will reward everyone who purchases for a long time." "A strange and lovely acoustic oddity" "This release is also amazing!! A must !!" |
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Gedanken Splitter Label: Roaratorio
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Deliverance
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split Label: Roaratorio
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Three Improvisations on Modified Banjo Label: Chairkickers Music
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Four Improvisations on Label: Nero's Neptune
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Debut Solo Label: Mutant Music
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Maccaferri Label: Freedom From
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Saturday, May 10th, 2008 Thursday, May 15th, 2008
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Gedanken Splitter deliverance
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Sunday, May 4th, 2008 Saturday, May 10th, 2008 Thursday, May 15th, 2008
Feature on Weekend America
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P a u l M e t z g e r
Banjo and Guitar Improvisations
