Bill Nace
Through a Room
Album · Ambient · 2022 · Drag City
Bill Nace is best-known as the other guitarist alongside Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon in Body/Head, whose noisy improvisations have brought new life to the world of underground avant-garde music. Made largely using a Japanese autoharp-like instrument called the taishōgoto, Through a Room is less a feat of technique than texture, staking out a scratchy, haunted corner of the underground somewhere between musique concrète and the atmospheric side of a band like Wolf Eyes. “Crooked Teeth” is fascinatingly ugly and “E: E” surprisingly beautiful, and if “Les Echos (Piece for Tuba)” actually has a tuba on it, Nace has disfigured it beyond recognition. But the centerpiece is “Ann,” which is somehow both lyrical and harsh, and tactile and mysterious.
Through a Room
Bill Nace
Bill Nace is best-known as the other guitarist alongside Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon in Body/Head, whose noisy improvisations have brought new life to the world of underground avant-garde music. Made largely using a Japanese autoharp-like instrument called the taishōgoto, Through a Room is less a feat of technique than texture, staking out a scratchy, haunted corner of the underground somewhere between musique concrète and the atmospheric side of a band like Wolf Eyes. “Crooked Teeth” is fascinatingly ugly and “E: E” surprisingly beautiful, and if “Les Echos (Piece for Tuba)” actually has a tuba on it, Nace has disfigured it beyond recognition. But the centerpiece is “Ann,” which is somehow both lyrical and harsh, and tactile and mysterious.
