Marco Fusinato – Spectral Arrows: Auckland [LP]

"Spectral Arrows: Auckland was recorded at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tāmaki, New Zealand, during Shout Whisper Wail! The 2017 Chartwell Show, curated by Natasha Conland. On the top floor of the three-story museum, Fusinato performed for seven hours, occupying the gallery space with an enormous array of amps in front of his work, The Infinitive #4 (2015). Featuring a series of sequential excerpts from the performance, this recording sees Fusinato using a single-minded focus on the possibilities of distortion and massive volumes. Passages of hands-on guitar mangling and wailing atonality are overtaken by gusts of white noise; sections of buzzing single-note drone build to a keening wall of fluctuating tones reminiscent of the heavy minimalism of Tony Conrad’s Four Violins. Along the way we are also treated to some passages of guitar skronk using Fusinato’s newest weapon of choice, a hollow metal pole with serrations cut into it, run along the guitar’s strings like a sort of anti-slide, choking the strings into a tormented metallic sizzle. Packaged in in one of Fusinato’s signature head-scratcher sleeves, this is another essential sally from one of contemporary guitar music’s fiercest exponents."

theblackesthole, 2019