Vignes

West coast microtonal guitar improvisers Nels Cline, Jim McAuley and the late Rod Poole make a beautiful noise on this collection of often dissonant but ultimately breathtaking instrumentals. All three of these players specialized in chaotic, pointillistic improvisations characterized by an original use of microtonal intervals. The resulting music occasionally evokes guitar pioneers like Rhys Chatham, Derek Bailey, John Fahey, and Sonny Sharrock but there are few real parallels for the music performed here. Trio member Nels Cline, best known as the lead guitarist for Wilco, recalls that the group would agree on a previously untested alternate tuning before embarking on a series of entirely unprepared improvisations. Unsurprisingly, this technique makes for some fairly disjointed music. Though the chaotic scrapes, bangs and trills of Vignes might seem forbidding to the uninitiated, there is nonetheless a remarkable sense of collaborative musical chemistry permeating these recordings.