Through A Room

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.

Using the looped-and-screwed methodology of Both, Nace takes a seismic step, building the process into a larger compositional process, employing guitar plus tapes, hurdy gurdy, doughnut pipe, quelle est belle and the nu Nace ax of choice, taishōgoto. Phrases talk to and obliterate each other, expanding and emerging into brave new unheard vistas.

On his second solo album for Drag City, the Philadelphia guitarist continues to develop his singular style, incorporating tape loops, taishōgoto, and hurdy-gurdy into his sculptural approach.