MARCO OPPEDISANO: Electroacoustic Compositions for Electric Guitar

Marco Oppedisano

Electroacoustic Compositions for Electric Guitar

© 2007 Marco Oppedisano (634479561665)

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Multitrack electroacoustic works utilizing numerous electric guitar, electric bass and female voice samples.

tracks

1 Frozen Tears
2 Time Lapse
3 Karmicom
4 What's That Noise?
5 Did You Hear That?
6 The End Is Near
7 Steel Sky
8 Limbo
9 The Dark Wood
10 Eternal Lovers
11 Monks in Dazzling Lead Cloaks
12 The Alchemists

notes

Marco Oppedisano - Electroacoustic Compositions For Electric Guitar

OKS Recordings of North America is pleased to announce the release of Electroacoustic Compositions for Electric Guitar, our fifth major release. This CD-R is now available through cdbaby.com as well as Amazon.com, Los Angeles’ Amoeba Records, New York’s Other Music and Kim’s Underground. It will be available for digital download at iTunes, Napster, Yahoo Music and many other digital download services.

Marco Oppedisano is a composer, a classically trained guitarist and producer. Marco has worked with Oren Fader, Tom Buckner and Kevin R. Gallagher, and he has performed the music of Glenn Branca. Oppedisano’s music has been described by Time Out New York as “…mind-bending music for electronics and guitar…hear Oppedisano’s intricate roar.” Tokafi said, “…this is full-on, in-your-face and almost confrontational music…Marco Oppedisano's music goes straight to your heart.”

This collection chronicles almost a decade’s worth of Marco’s electroacoustic music. For Electroacoustic Compositions for Electric Guitar, Marco abandoned live performance and found a paradise that mixes extended technique, digital processing, and pointillist editing.
In some places he achieves a beauty that rivals a Fennesz style of ecstasy and in others a distorted abstraction that could be compared to Keith Rowe, but Marco’s inspired ability to shape shift his guitar into so many beasts is a unique twist that is all his own. Each of these pieces was primarily sourced from his electric guitar or bass playing
and finely tuned for months or years, much like the work of a sculptor or masterpiece painter.

In his epic Time Lapse, Marco’s sound palette covers a great deal of territory starting with deep tones that resemble a didgeridoo far more than any stringed instrument before turning into a garden of tapewarped squiggles that recall Tod Dockstader’s classic work. Karmicom is a powerful piece displaying some of Marco’s most fierce guitar work that ends in a swirl of operatic vocals provided by the only other musician to appear on this recording, Marco’s wife, Kimberly. The End is Near is a jump-cut distillation of the broad range that Marco is capable of, easily hopping from gorgeous soundscapes to Zeppelin-style riffing.

Recently, Marco has started an electroacoustic improvisational trio with OKSRNA label-mates Bill Byrne (The Painful Leg Injuries) and John Ibarra (El Plan De Aguavodka) called BIOS. They have recorded an album, Retiring to Palermo to Make Apple Whine, due in late 2007. Marco has had his compositional works performed by the Fireworks Ensemble, Glass Farm Ensemble, Morris Lang and The Brooklyn College Percussion Ensemble, and The Zyryab Guitar Quartet of Portugal. In October 2006 and February 2007, Oppedisano headlined concerts at Dominic Frasca's The Monkey NYC featuring his electroacoustic works for electric guitar and works for live electric guitar and CD playback.

This CD-R release marks the latest major release from OKS Recordings of North America, a label run by Bill Byrne and his longtime collaborator, Jonah Goldstein. OKSRNA specializes in artist-created CD-R releases that cater to the tech-savvy listener who is ready for new arenas of creativity for musical expression.

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ELECTROACOUSTIC WORKS FOR ELECTRIC GUITAR (liner notes)

The works here were composed between 1999-2005. All sound sources on this disc consist of electric guitar and electric bass samples, with the exception of the female vocal samples in KARMICOM. Sounds were either kept in their original state or were processed with effects. These works have no live performance aspect.

Track 1, “Frozen Tears” is also a depiction from Dante’s Inferno and Track 8, “Limbo” is from the Purgatorio. They were not composed at the same time as the original Scenes from Dante’s Inferno set.

Marco Oppedisano, electric guitar and electric bass
Kimberly Fiedelman, voice samples

photography and cover design - Bill Byrne

contact: www.myspace.com/marcooppedisanomus
marco.oppedisano@gmail.com

All compositions ASCAP
Copyright, Marco Oppedisano, 2007
All Rights Reserved.

OKS Recordings of North America
www.oksrecordingsofnorthamerica.com/marco.html
OKSRNA - 007


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Marco Oppedisano is a composer, guitarist and producer with ample recording and performance experience as a guitarist in music ranging from rock/pop, jazz, hip hop, club/dance music, contemporary concert music, free improvisation, film music and musical theater.

Oppedisano has recorded with the BIOS trio and performed with various contemporary music ensembles and musicians in the New York City area. He has had works performed by the Fireworks Ensemble, Glass Farm Ensemble, Morris Lang and The Brooklyn College Percussion Ensemble, The Zyryab Guitar Quartet of Portugal, and distinguished guitarists; Oren Fader and Kevin R. Gallagher. He has recorded for Capstone
Records (Vox Novus 2003 60x60 project), performed in Glenn Branca's pieces for 100 guitars and in the US premiere of Guitars D'Amour. Oppedisano also is featured with Tom Buckner on an electroacoustic composition entitled, Hoodlum Priest by Noah Creshevsky (released on the Mutable Music label in 2003). In October 2006 and February 2007, Oppedisano performed concerts at The Monkey NYC featuring his electroacoustic works for electric guitar and works for live electric guitar and CD playback.

Television appearances by Oppedisano include CUNY TV and the Discovery Channel. He has done radio interviews for Kalvos and Damian (www.kalvos.org), and had works programmed on WNYC “New Sounds,” CBC Radio “The Signal with Laurie Brown,” Contemporary Classical Internet Radio (live 365), and many other internet radio stations. In 2005 and 2006, Oppedisano performed live with Josh Weinstein on WOR710’s Joey Reynolds
Show in New York City. In December 2006, he performed with Josh Weinstein on Vin Scelsa's long running radio program, "Idiot's Delight." In October 2006, Oppedisano was featured in an online interview with Urban Guitar 'Zine and in April 2007, did a 15 Questions Interview with Tokafi.

Oppedisano’s work as a producer and assistant producer include projects, First Flight, a solo classical guitar disc by the prolific New York City based guitarist, Oren Fader. He has worked as assistant producer on an album called Dance Mix by the Fireworks Ensemble. Scheduled CD releases for 2008 include The Ominous Corner; compositions for electric guitar and playback and Tesla at Coney Island; a full length collaboration release with NYC feedback machine pioneer and prolific recording artist, David Lee Myers. Oppedisano’s works have been performed and heard in various areas around the world and are all registered with ASCAP (Out Your Ear Music).

Oppedisano is a native of Brooklyn, New York. He holds a B.A in Music Composition from the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music and an M.A in Music Composition from the Queens College Aaron Copland School of Music.

reviews

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  • The Present Day Composer Refuses To Die
    author: Music Listener

    None too soon comes this debut album by Marco, an amazing musician. It is so inspiring to listen to an album such as this....uncompromising in following his inspiration. Beautiful production, compositionally complex, and created with excellent technique. One can hear Feldman, Subotnik, Stravinsky, Webern, Varese and Cage in Marco's pieces, but they are never derivative. There is an almost palpable feeling of authority and class about this disc....and as such it stands above anything else I've heard this year, irrespective of genre or record label. Highly recommened.

  • Brilliant!
    author: David Lee Myers

    I can't add much to what the other glowing reviews say. It's all true, this guy is one amazing talent. I call it "David Torn and Adrian Belew interpret Stravinsky". Serious composition here, and none of this obsessiveness with "guitar tone" and "chops", although he shows plenty. No, it's the music and the sounds that matter to Mr. Oppedisano. Buy it, you won't find anything like it elsewhere!

  • Marco approaches electroacoustic composition for electric guitar neither in comp
    author: Vincent Bergeron

    I won't give it 5 stars because I don't want to lie concerning my listening preferences. I would prefer these pieces with singing and sometimes more obvious melodic patterns..but it's about the only negative idea (completely subjective of course) I can write about this fantastic demonstration "de savoir-faire". Marco approaches electroacoustic composition for electric guitar neither in complete cold abstraction, neither in complete warm melodicism. This is perhaps why I prefer him to most guitarists exploring similar ideas. Not unlike Fennesz, he can be quiet accessible and really far from the academicians. He still learned more than a few tricks from them and he is truly not interested in doing a sort of soporific new age music for the moment - listening to latest Fennesz collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto, I was not impressed at all. Let's forget about this comparison because Oppedisano is not just a few invented tricks repeated over the years. His talent to include a variety of textures heard for the first time in different time eras give his music a timeless feel. Time Lapse from 2004 reminds me of Mike Oldfield, but with frenetic, close to video games transverb effects. Later, a sort of digital krautrock sounds a bit like Trans Am with Ben Frost or if Werner Herzog made movies in collaboration with David Lynch ; your grandmother might die soon, but her spirit will always live on in the mythology of her genealogical tree. Elsewhere, he often acknowledge New-York noise, but refuse to let it define his multidimensional sound. This is a first official release and I'm sure it's meant to showcase the guitarist abilities through a wide range of dynamics, sound intensities, structures and production techniques. Perhaps, it's sometimes hard to identify the true Oppedisano in all this diversity, but a first release coming from an electroacoustic guitarist should always be this much fun !

  • Groundbreaking avant guitar musique concrète!!
    author: Ken Rubenstein

    Marco is as contemporary and progressive a guitarist/composer as you will find on this planet. Amongst the many things that renders me in a paralytic state of awe over him is the fact that he has enviable tech/shred chops, and yet chooses to make a music so entirely personal and artful and detached from anything that even remotely relates to the mainstream guitar culture. When he does sweep, it actually has compositional worth, as opposed to some indulgent act of flashiness. He makes music strictly for himself and his very intimate vision of things, and for this reason alone it succeeds. This is music without compromise. It's often dark, complex and sonically on another plane all together. Marco walks that very delicate and elusive and razor thin line between conceptual and technical. That is where every composer should aspire to be, but most invariably fail. He has positively secured his place in the pantheon of important composer/guitarists. At times reminiscent of Stockhausen, Ligeti and even some Milton Babbitt or Subotnik, and at other times extending the idea of the loop/sample playback work of modern composers such as Reich, Adams and Scott Johnson (for instance works like John Somebody and Patty Hearst), Oppedisano creates an extremely engaging and emotionally evocative world. The production is jaw-dropping. Marco has obviously paid great attention to sonic detail and clarity, as well as compositional depth. Listening to this CD is an incredible aural experience and touches your heart, soul and brain all simultaneously. If you want to experience artful and virtuosic and uncompromisingly modern and progressive music, I highly recommend picking up this CD.

  • Press "Buy This CD" right now! Fantastic!
    author: Shane Hendricks (Sonic Deviant)

    I've received my copy, and it's absolutely KILLER! What a great job. First of all, the production quality will floor you. Some of the recording is so pristine that, at one point, I was looking outside and around the house to find the source of the other worldly sounds, but then I realized it was the recording! It's absolutely a professional recording, and the packaging and disc are tops! Now, the music. I don't know where to begin. This has so many wonderful sonic flavors on it, which I love immensely. I'm a huge fan of interspersing everyday noises and sounds with musical motifs and phrases, and this has many instances of that kind of thing. Little guitar melodies appearing hear and there (ref: 6:40 or so into Time Lapse--neat little clean guitar melodies), with nice bits of counterpoint playing across the stereo spectrum. There are many dizzying spectral forays like this, where there appear to be several versions of a sound or series of sounds--playing against each other so nicely. Time Lapse (one of my favs) is 11:22 of tasty aural goodness. It begins with a sustaining, vibrating sound that reminds me of a cello or double bass being bowed ever so slowly. And another thing I love is the expansion and contraction of layers--from minimal to chunky and back down to a simple pulsing timbre. Each piece doesn't just drone on with a certain ambient texture; these are rollercoaster rides of timbre, dynamics, and expressiveness, with multiple twists and turns. It's very obvious the work that went into this record. There's nothing boring on here! It's darn hard to compose a work that is long and yet anti-banal, but it's apparent that you understand how to take care of that rather gigantic problem. I can't say enough good stuff about it. And Marco's playing perfectly compliments the material; his technical facility on the guitar comes through without pretentiousness or being a self-indulgent chops display. It's more than obvious that his focus is on the compositions--the guitar playing serves that end. Perfect... Karmicom has these bell-like guitar tones and clanking sounds that remind of a demented grandfather clock, which one doesn't want to chime in fear of what might happen. Distorted noises and volume swells. What a terrific sound experiment this is. The clock-like clanking anchors this one...very cool. And what great vocal samples in there (must be Kimberly, eh?) Man, Cage would be pleased with this CD! This is a must-own for every experimental music and guitar fanatic!

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