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Baker's Dozen

Organs Of Ecstasy: Ben Chasny’s Favourite Albums
Ben Graham , June 14th, 2023 10:10

Questing experimental guitar hero Ben Chasny, aka Six Organs Of Admittance, tells Ben Graham about 13 records that influenced his playing and shaped his worldview, from psychedelic Japanese noise rock to American Primitive acoustic fingerpicking

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Rudolph Grey – Mask Of Light

I guess he’s considered an action guitar player, that’s how he's described. I guess it’s sort of analogous to action painting. This record has Jim Sauter from Borbetomagus on it and Rashied Ali plays drums. That's the trio on the first track, and it's just this kinetic blast. For me, when I heard this record, I didn’t know that that music was possible, and I certainly didn't know that kind of music was possible with the guitar. It was total freedom, but with the guitar. Sometimes you would hear freedom in music with the guitar, but it would be a little section or they're playing a little free and they would come back. But for this, that was the point of the music, and it realigned the entire guitar for both my acoustic playing and my electric playing, it just wiped the slate clean and blew my mind. It's still one of my favourite electric guitar records. It's just incredible. And on the flip side, Alan Licht plays on it, and Alan Licht played with Rudolph Grey in a band called Blue Humans with Tom Surgal, so that led to Blue Humans for me, and all of that was very, very brain cleansing for me. But this was Rudolph just throwing everything away, all forms and conventions and yeah, just total beautiful annihilation really.