Invoice Orcutt’s Music For 4 Guitars is a bit like a favourite dish. It tasted nice the primary time, scrumptious the second, and by the third, you’re beginning to understand that it’s endlessly renewable. HausLive 4, an viewers recording that was taped at Chicago’s Constellation venue and launched on cassette by an area label, is that illuminating third version. Whether or not the guitar nerd in your life throws down with a boombox within the yard or a Bluetooth speaker within the bathe, it’s the summer time get together soundtrack that they won’t have identified that they wanted. However they do.
First, some historical past. Orcutt arrived on the unique album after a number of years spent making an attempt to reply a pal’s dare to compose a guitar quartet. He ultimately reached an idea: Develop a sequence of transient, minimalist buildings and understand them utilizing the wealthy, brittle language of Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band. Sitting at dwelling in entrance of his laptop, Orcutt began every bit with one monitor, then constructed it up with recorded improvisations, which he then pared again so that there have been all the time 4 interlocking electric-guitar components. Earlier than he launched the unique album in 2022, he recruited fellow guitarist Shane Parish to transcribe the piece. Parish then helped Orcutt put collectively a band that included Wendy Eisenberg and Ava Mendoza, they usually toured the piece across the U.S. and Europe in 2023 and 2024. First, a stay double LP captured the music after the quartet had gotten sufficiently accustomed to begin switching issues up; now, the cassette into account checks in on how the music’s ripened after one other 12 months.
Formally, HausLive 4 is just not that completely different from 4 Guitars Reside. The sequence is similar, proper all the way down to the open spots the place Orcutt introduces the quartet and its members take solos. The variations are within the particulars. The remarkably vivid recording by native music head Joel Berk (who performs underneath the identify ragenap) achieves a tonal saturation that properly enhances the extra roomy atmosphere of its predecessor. The quartet’s assault is extra keyed up; whereas the tunes may differ solely a pair seconds from the sooner editions, their really feel is extra springy and pressing. And people empty spots attest to the diploma to which the entire band’s membership has chosen to inhabit Orcutt’s world. Parish, Eisenberg and Mendoza share manifold chops and flexibility, and every of them cuts unfastened in extremely particular person trend in some unspecified time in the future. However regardless of how far their gildings wander, they in the end resolve in a approach that highlights or amplifies some side of the unique music. These items is gloriously alive and nonetheless rising. [Hausu Mountain]
—Invoice Meyer
