The Quietus - A new rock music and pop culture website

Baker's Dozen

Compiling & Filing: Jan St. Werner's Favourite Albums
Nick Hutchings , April 30th, 2015 11:23

With his operatic performance-cum-radio play Miscontinuum released as an album earlier this year, the Mouse On Mars man takes Nick Hutchings on a trawl of his favourite avant-garde and experimental records

John_fahey_1430392747_resize_460x400

John Fahey - Requia
John Fahey was an artist and guitar virtuoso. I like Requia because you can feel the visual element to it. It's an audio collage. His paintings were also really frantic and very intense but at the same time beautiful and carefully composed. You understand the dedication and concentration he has.

He also has modesty towards sound and his music and how much it meant to him, but it could also be so destructive. I like that quality. Being destructive with something you love so much also means you don't simply want to hold onto it and keep it tight, because that could kill it much more than if you chop it up and smash it into pieces. You're able to revive it, or revitalise it. You know where it's from. It's not the actual guitar pick, it's what the guitar pick makes with you and what you say with it. Even Fahey's guitar would be more than a guitar. It was like a voice, a pen and a typewriter. He even transcended that and he's definitely a 20th-century superhero. I hardly heard anything by him I didn't like.