Derek Bailey, Pat Metheny, Gregg Brendian, Paul Wertico
The Sign Of 4

You are in a museum. You stand before a white canvas with a cut in the center. You can remain standing, glance at it absentmindedly, and move on. Or you can stop, think about what the cut means. Or focus, activate your critical capacity, and fill the void left on the canvas by the artist with your very personal analysis.

Because art is something too personal to be interpreted in a single way. And here, with superhuman effort, you ponder the meanings of improvisation, of music that isn't music, and you enjoy analyzing the spaces between sounds. You call upon all your cognitive abilities and reason on why it took three CDs, for four great priests of sound, to express their very personal, unique, and orgasmic instrumental jumble.

Between moans and distortions, each with his weapon-instrument held in the most unusual way, the 4 are amused to "push every single string to its limit", and maltreat every extension to achieve the most inhuman and disconcerting of results. A hodgepodge full of meanings without meaning, the culmination of a cold and mathematical twisted and evil expression. A challenge, with the bitter aftertaste of torture. A crossing of indescribable and untranslatable boundaries. Music, if it can be described as such, unclassifiable, unplaceable, and disturbing. A mark.

Derek Bailey is a bold experimental guitarist, who has spanned from jazz to progressive rock. He is a mathematician at the antipodes. He rejects any language, but draws adequate conclusions and produces improvisation in a scholastic, almost literal way.

Pat Metheny displays his instrumental anthology, from the Gibson to the Pikasso, to the Synth to the Fretless, Wetico and Brendian on percussion.

Three CDs: "Statement Of The Case," "The Science Of Deduction" and "The Balance Of Probability", each over an hour, all created in 1996.

It is a contact with the most difficult you can imagine, an auditory mission, a depraved mix of distortions. Atonal music, acidic adrenaline. Death of routine.

Published in 1997 on Knitting Factory Works label. Untraceable. Fortunately for you.