Love for Réimsí Géara (with the exception of the final track, which, ahem, I wrote) from Andrzej Nowak at Trybuna Muzyki Spontanicznej (Spontaneous Music Tribune)
Scott Fields & Elliott Sharp Réimsí Géara
Studio zOaR , New York, August 2023: Elliott Sharp, Scott Fields – electric guitars, compositions. Eight tracks, 55 minutes.
The New York guitarists have prepared eight of their own compositions for us (the former is responsible for the even numbers, the latter for the odd ones). Each of them, saturated with multi-genre associations, leads the way of controlled expression and skillfully constructed dramaturgy. Only at the very end did the musicians lack a bit of critical sense. The album could easily have ended its life after the seventh track, after the oh-so-adequate three quarters of an hour.
The seven compositions in question last from less than five minutes to seven minutes with a little extra. The first two focus on rhythm and post-melodic dynamics with a rock edge. In the process of phrasing, the artists are more willing to look for similarities than to enter into a dissonant discourse. In the third part, they take their foot off the gas and saturate the story with a portion of scratchy ambient. Then they reach for a handful of screaming feedback, and at the final stage, to sound details saturated with a strong current. In the next two pieces, they build a post-ballad flow from short, broken phrases and a pleiad of harmonics. On the one hand, their narrative smells of blues, on the other – fortunately – it does not spare us preparations, realized not only with the power of guitar pickups, but also with post-rock expression. In the sixth part, rhythm returns and further portions of healthy interactions. There is no shortage of imitations at the phrasing stage, but the story is glued together above all from mutual counters. In the seventh part, the dark beginning is particularly successful, then the musicians do not spare us many additional genre tropes. In the eighth, almost thirteen-minute narrative, they float away into the immensity of a cooled, almost dead post-ballad that seems to have no end.
*) I'm talking about Song , Sophie Agnel's solo album
