To say that Marc Ribot is a superb guitarist is an understatement: he plays across genres with ease, with strong grooves and remarkable technical prowess, while generally seeming to be enjoying himself with whatever he plays. This album of "exercises" is a profoundly great example of Ribot's abilities and range. Played entirely on acoustic guitar, he presents fifteen works and studies in just under an hour: 14 subtitled etudes and one larger work of a folkish compositional form.
Alone and out front, the acoustic guitar is a surly beast to control, and control is what you'll notice most in these quirky compositions. Etude #2: morton is a prime example, with a minimal attitude that belies the interaction that Ribot sets up with himself, a bass counterpoint to ridiculously complex runs in the upper register, perplexing and playful forays that resolve to a strong recurring melody. That playful character is prominent throughout the album, making a potentially serious collection of works embraceable and thoroughly enjoyable. "Etude #5: lame" is anything but, a relaxing set of runs that frequently use the guitar body in sanding, shaking and otherwise throttling sounds to great effect. "Etude #6: cowboy" is a hoot, a loose Western theme that has a hard time taking off, with crazy plucking progressions and playing that Syd Barrett would have been proud off, before taking off on a complex chordal run, only to return to the cowboy motif that started the study. "Etude #13: wank" uses the guitar body in disturbing ways, making the surface moan while sliding up and down the strings; it's probably not 'right' but it certainly makes for an unusual and likable piece. All of this is summed up in the only non-etude work of the CD, the lovely "Joy of Repetition", a beautiful and drifting piece that caps off with an incredible piece of finger picking; Ribot anecdotally claims that he wrote it after he fired his shrink.
Ribot's mind seems to work in weird ways, and these compositions were conceived as 'impossible' etudes and exercises in guitar technique, which he describes as setups for improvising. His original intention was to publish these as an exercise book to teach guitarists how to play with and in spite of futility. As he described in a 2005 CityPaper interview: "I've been trying to figure out exactly what it is I do and distill it into this book of exercises. The idea of exercises is usually that you stretch your fingers or improve yourself in some way. I've tried to create exercises that leave you absolutely no better off afterwards than before you've done them. I call them 'Exercises in Futility,' and it's to teach the student to master the sense of futility that has been the wellspring of my inspiration... It's relaxing." If this is how the man relaxes...
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