Bill Orcutt :: A New Way To Pay Old Debts
After a long, harmonious hiatus from music, after the split of the famed noise polluters, Harry Pussy, the legendary guitarist and composer of compelling chaos, Bill Orcutt, relocated to the Bay Area before making a revolutionary return in 2009, after the release of his 1996 solo debut “Solo CD” with the release of his sophomore album and debut on his own imprint Palilalia Records, which turned 16 years old back in August, and is nearing a 100 releases in its dynamical discography, “A New Way to Pay Old Debts.” After a decade, and some change, away from his carefully concentrated craft, the veteran musician lit a melodic match that would start a freakish fire that could be seen from any cosmic corner in the galaxy if you can see through its sonic smoke screen. A compelling body of work that iconically intertwines the trepidatious textures of the No Wave movement with the embracive economy of the Noise narrative that swept through the indie rock scene like a tonal tornado, Orcutt’s guitar work is filled with monstrous melodies that shapeshift with every strike to the strings like some murderous machine running on midnight oil. While radical reverberations radiate through the luminous landscape of free improvisation and the intense intimacy of the soloist's soundscape, the veteran musician returns with such vibrancy and pent-up energy that the clouds move to the side, and the alchemical atmosphere begins to thicken like some juxtaposition jelly.
“A New Way to Pay Old Debts” breaks through the classic yellow barricade tape that separates fact from fiction, reality from the morbid matrix, and straight onto the spiritual scene, where no salty stone is left unturned. The album was recorded in the summer of 2009, while simultaneously coexisting alongside historical moments such as the LA Lakers winning the NBA championship, the death of Michael Jackson, the H1N1 swine flu pandemic, the Sumatra earthquakes, and the first inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States, to name a few. A time and place in our country that seems like a lifetime ago, and an album that seems like it was meditatively manufactured in the volatile vacuum of space several light-years away, Orcutt wields a warfaring weapon of atmospheric accuracy that ultimately shines through the esoteric emotions his music would later be so known for. Throughout the album’s voluminous valleys and harmonious hills, a liberating language is spoken through the spiritual static where its brave broadcast can be felt from one chipped chakra to the next. With songs like “Pocket Underground,” “Street Peaches,” “Sad News From Korea (Lighting Hopkins),” and the album’s title track, severing the main vein that connects the neck to the mortality of mobility, listeners have remained in its grandiose grasp for nearly two decades with no concept of time, or relation to the emptiness of existence. Thank God for Bill Orcutt.
