Fully Unformed by A. Comeau

Guitars declare, define, re-act. Pieces come to be in real time, improvised in the course of a daily life furnished with global & personal upheaval. Composite roles, tempo dilation, and fluid harmonies invite the return of a music prior to abstraction on the page, prior to fixation & standardization by visual reproduction, prior to electrification by recording.

“The best technique is none at all.” Henry Miller said this after realizing his professional literary man had to be killed off. He had found the bridge from past to present. He was looking for the bridge from present to future. McLuhan tells us that “in the electronic age we may have discovered the limits of the alphabet technology.” This album asks whether we must say the same about today’s musical technologies.

Acute societal pressure exists today for the individual to be informed, completely. One alternative re-action is to become unformed, fully. This simply means to be a polite guest in the house of information.

In the laundry room of a rental property on the bay, for a period of five weeks during the summer of 2020, a multitrack recorder sat engaged with an electric guitar plugged direct–in. Free of grids, metronomes, & clocks, pieces were recorded at all hours. Environmental situations were observed & translated. Also present: a fiddle, bass, clarinet, & an acoustic guitar.

This process allowed for a direct transcription of time as experienced, unencumbered by the fog of memory. Each layer was played in full in a brand new unique moment, juxtaposing snapshots of various frames of mind. This approach to creation borrowed from the technique of the symbolist poem and the printmaker’s overlay: multiple images at once.

Each week produced a distinct collection of music & sounds. Fully Unformed is comprised of selections from the first four, recontextualized, reamplified, and representative of many different perspectives. A lone violin on #13 hints at the content of future releases.

A. Comeau produces & publishes work for the Main St. Music Library.