Avant Music News

Roger Kleier has a few words to share about a CD releases and an upcoming New York performance.

Roger Kleier’s “El Pocho Loco” Project
Tuesday, February 17, 8:30 PM
Roulette (at Location One)
20 Greene Street, New York City, between Canal & Grand Streets.
Admission $15, (DTW, Harvestworks, Seniors, Under 30, and Students $10)
212 219 8242

This concert is the premiere performance of “El Pocho Loco”, Roger Kleier’s new quartet,
and celebrates the release of his new CD “The Night Has Many Hours”.
Roger Kleier (guitar), Annie Gosfield (keyboards), Trevor Dunn (bass), Ches Smith (drums and percussion)

Join us as we charge through noisy guitar instrumentals, twangy improvisation, and mangled, tangled, and newfangled electric sounds. Led by downtown stalwart guitarist/composer Roger Kleier, the band includes innovative percussionist Ches Smith, who has worked with Marc Ribot and his own project Good for Cows; bassist Trevor Dunn from the influential band Mr. Bungle and John Zorn‘s Electric Masada; and keyboardist Annie Gosfield, a composer with three releases on the Tzadik label.

Roger’s newest CD release, “The Night Has Many Hours” (Innova 685), is a collection of Kleier’s personal vocabulary of manipulated guitar sounds and electronic effluvia incorporated into fully notated compositions, driving instrumentals, and pure texture. It features a three movement piece for cello and electronically altered guitar performed by ex-Kronos cellist Joan Jeanrenaud, titled “What Is The Price Of Iron?”, and a ripping organ solo by composer Annie Gosfield. “The Night Has Many Hours” consists of 11 diverse pieces Inspired by urban chaos, cold and icy winters, deserted alleyways, dark subway tunnels, rolling California hillsides, and even an occasional quiet pool of beauty.

Roger says of the CD:

This CD is the final third of a trilogy that includes my previous two releases “KlangenBang” and “Deep Night, Deep Autumn”. The entire trilogy has been a while in the making, but, at last, here it is…

I have always enjoyed the works of fiction writers who have main characters that reappear in sequential novels, especially noir masters like Raymond Chandler, Walter Mosley, and William Gibson. For my three solo CDs, I have thought of my own guitar playing and the sound world it occupies as a “character” who shows up repeatedly in a myriad of musical situations, with each variation somehow related to the last one.

For the first part of the trilogy, “KlangenBang”, my musical character dealt with concert performance, improvisation, and song form. In “Deep Night…” this character explored a dark world of electronic manipulations and sinister development. For this final episode, “The Night Has Many Hours”, the guitar player character investigates the concept of variations in ambience. These ambiences might include those found in urban chaos, cold and icy winters, deserted alleyways, dark subway tunnels, rolling California hillsides, or even an occasional quiet pool of beauty…

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