Greg MALCOLM "Homesick for Nowhere"

1 Lonely Woman (Ornette Coleman)
2 Homesick for Nowhere (based on traditional klezmer tune)
3 Depresso Guitar (based on Islamic folk tune)
4 Chairman Mao (Charlie Haden)
5 Blues for Aida (Steve Lacy)
6 Strawberry Fields (Lennon-McCartney)
7 Oderbruch (Konrad Bauer)
8 Incident at Owl Creek (based on Islamic tune)
9 What is the Sound of Two-handed Tapping? (based on Japanese folk tune)
10 Spatula Boy (based on Japanese folk tune)

Album reviews

Dunedin Fringe Review: "Lines of Flight: He often accompanies his gorgeous guitar improvisations with two floor guitars, one played by an e-bow and the other with his foot (sometimes displaying astounding pedal dexterity); alongside this, he taps out a rhythm on the tambourine with his other foot. This is something you have to see to believe You should buy his new CD (available from Corpus Hermeticum) right now and find out how crap all the other music you've been listening to is."

The Package: "Think you know what guitar sounds like? You're wrong! You cannot truly know your guitar until you have shaken the uncut string ends in lieu of more costly percussion, rattled a tray of ball bearings around on its deck, and shoved a wooden paddle through the strings, playing on it with a violin bow. This is guitar, as experimental as those bombs you used to build in the backyard with your brother."

Dominion: "For every piece of unreserved beauty, such as Ornette Coleman's Lonely Woman, there are others that are more disturbing.On Spatula Boy, the electrification of a Japanese folk tune is both meditative and tinged with anguish. Malcolm is a master of these ambivalent moods."

David Keenan, The Wire, March 2003: "Greg Malcolm's Homesick for Nowhere, released on Russell's Corpus Hermeticum, is a solo guitar disc played on a series of prepared six strings, including one with five pickups internally resonating wires and independent tuning at both ends. A New Zealand fringe veteran, Malcolm served with Flying Nun's Breathing Cage in the mid 80s before forming the improv unit Don't Make Noise with John Kennedy. His previous solo sets consisted of conceptual song circles and radio plays but for Homesick Russell convinced Malcolm to "Shut up and play his guitar" with inspired results. The disc consists of cover versions of tracks by Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden, Steve Lacy and more, interspersed with variations on Islamic, Klezmer and Japanese folk tunes. Over drone guitar played with one foot and percussion with the other Malcolm triggers dense layers of enveloping drone into which he drops his waited notes. His customised instruments give him the reach of a miniature orchestra on tracks that range from gravity-defying improvisations of the calibre of Fushitsusha through to a version of Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" that sounds like 1966 Velvet Underground. Malcolm dubs it "Depresso Guitar"; it's that heavy."

Chris Culter, Re'r catalogue: "An excellent CD of pieces for guitars, usually more than one at a time, played in unconventional ways - in real time - with little in the way of electronic processing but rather using electric fans, ebow, slide, violin bow, multiple simultaneous instruments. What makes it especially interesting is the content: these are interpretations of tunes by Ornette Coleman, The Beatles, Connie Bauer, Charlie Haden and of traditional Klezmer, Japanese and Islamic melodies. Very unusual, very successful. A fine work, and nicely packaged"

Lines of Flight 2004: "The highlight of the evening had to be Greg Malcolm - I've seen him play quite a few times now, and let me tell you that the sight of a man playing one guitar with his hands and one with each foot never gets old! This set also wins the award for best use of video - Jenny Ward recorded the minutiae of Greg's performance and projected it onto the ceiling, allowing those of us who weren't sitting up the front to see what was going on. Greg played beautiful melodic tunes, but also explored the sounds it was possible to get from his custom-made acoustic guitar using bows, pendulums, springs and a swag of other toys and techniques."