ELDRITCH PRIEST

DORMITIVE VIRTUE

Halocline Trance Records

Eldritch Priest, guitar/composer/arranger/soloist.

For the past twenty some years, this Vancouver-based composer, guitarist, author and academia scholar has been building a mind-bending reputation with his books about music. One book was released in 2013 by Bloomsbury and titled, “Boring Formless Nonsense: Experimental Music and the Aesthetics of Failure.”  The more recent “Earworm and Event: Music, Daydreams and Other Imaginary Refrains” was released in 2022 by Duke University Press. Not only does he write about music, he performs it on his guitar.  During this recording, (a ‘live’ presentation at 8East in Vancouver, Canada) he presents music in support of his authored projects.

To explain this recorded event, Eldritch Priest says in his press package:

“I began my training as a jazz guitarist, but very quickly moved away from trying to play idiomatically.  That is, I was very interested in improvisation, yet I never really wanted to play bebop or (as great as he was) sound like Jim Hall.”

Although Priest begins this album with a fuzz pedal projection of his guitar introduction, almost like a rock band might begin a concert, he quickly settles down to an experimental jazz stance.  He plays very much the bravado cowboy standing straddle legged in the middle of a dusty street, about to have a shoot-out, hands poised above the guitar strings like they are holsters.  Somehow, I know he’s got the drop on me,  even before the outcome.

During his doctorate in cultural theory (not music) his guitar became a key musical outlet for him.  Increasingly, he found freedom of expression and emotion by playing his improvisational guitar songs.  That’s when he began composing.  “Autonomic Pulchritude” was created in 2011.  Priest employed a pitch tracking software to parallel his guitar lines with MIDI sounds.  On that excursion, he was practicing.  He later refined his approach for the “Omphaloskepsis” piece that was released as a double LP by Halocline Trance back in 2022.  Still, he didn’t want to be classified as a jazz guitarist?  However, on a tune called “Supposition Engine” he sounds very much like a jazz guitarist as he presents his unusual and beautiful composition.

Eldritch Priest has established a reputation of being Canada’s most intriguing improviser.  His music has a lovely way of dragging you into it, a melodic whirl pool of ideas, imagination and technique.  This solo guitar concert, (recorded ‘live”) challenges you to love and let go.  “Dormitive Virtue” is an album that creates a shock treatment to our senses.

Reviewed by Dee Dee McNeil

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