Nylon by Michalis Moschoutis

Greek musician Michalis Moschoutis delivers his debut full length release with a radical exploration of the sonic possibilities of a classical guitar. Entirely acoustic, tracked in just eight improvised takes, Nylon presents Moschoutis’s idiosyncratic and forceful style of playing, at times sounding like a physical attack to the guitar.

Nylon finds Moschoutis switching from plucking to bowing and strumming while sustaining high intensity and a continuous sense of forward motion. Very often virtuosity is about the refined technical skills that disguise the instrument’s material characteristics. Nylon on the other hand proposes a virtuosity manifesting the materiality and the physicality involved in the performance. Moschoutis transcends the instrument’s supposed limitations by bringing forth and magnifying all the usually undesirable noises that reveal its constructive features. The snapping of loose strings across the frets, the screeches of the nylon strings, accidental fingernail scratches and various buzzing sounds from the lower wire-round strings, become as important as the guitar’s deep tones. Or simply in Moschoutis’s own words, “in Nylon the guitar sounds exactly what it is; a sonorous piece of wood with 6 strings attached to it”.

Like all Holotype Editions LPs, Nylon comes in a limited edition of 300 copies, pressed on 140gram black vinyl. Cover artwork and layout designed by We Are Still Bold & Beautiful.