Recording: Unknown Guitar Quartet

Artist: Unknown Guitar Quartet

Song: Drag [composer: Patrick O'Reilly]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (416 Toronto Creative Improvisers Festival – Night 2), November 11, 2017.

Unknown Guitar Quartet - Drag

The nimble 416 Festival — celebrating, as always, multiple streams of improvised and experimental music — folded itself down to two nights this year, of which I could only make it to the second. This night started with an outing from this recent collaborative effort that has appeared in a couple variations, though this time 'round it saw Brian Abbott, Patrick O'Reilly, Rob Grieve and Luan Phung sharing the stage, with each of the first three offering a composition. There was plenty microtonal pluck-drift, with each player offering their own pedalchain tone. Rob Grieve's "Plasmatic Populations" (which can be heard over at his soundcloud) hewed to a noisier aesthetic, Brian Abbott's added more guitar preparations (chopsticks, paperclips, fidget spinner) to a piece that sounded like a Raymond Scott 78 played at 33, while this offering, from Patrick O'Reilly, is spare enough in places that one could take it as the work of a single guitarist working with a loop pedal.