To corral this kind of volume, of energy, demands a thorough understanding of what you’re doing and real delicacy. Even when restrained, the listener can still hear the guitar and its amplificatory partner in creation straining at the leash Ball has placed around its neck. That he can swing from a noise that conjures the howls of the last days of an aircraft carrier as it is dismantled in a maritime graveyard ( Within The Billow I), to playing that can only be described as delicate and nuanced, speaks oodles for both his instrumental proficiency and his artistic sensibilities. This is a deeply emotional instrumental album, one made deeper and more evocative by the skill of the artist… Granular, chiming, clanging, Ball wrests beautiful and terrifying sounds from his six strings to elicit a range of emotions and responses in the listener.
This is a tone that I can feel like grains of dry sand between my teeth, a sound so alive that it feels barely contained by the talent of its master at the reins.
These are sounds that take skilful craftsmanship, a deft touch, and huge amounts of gain and volume. Tone is the Holy Grail of guitarists the world over, heck, this righteous digitome even has a guru who devotes whole chapters to those dedicated pilgrims who tread the winding, tortuous path of the Camino de Tono.Ī good guitar tone is worth a thousand words, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to expend my rationed word count trying and failing to sum up the incredible sound that Ball conjures from his equipment. Of course, I could’ve just had a six-word review: The clue is in the name.īIG|BRAVE are on Southern Lord, home to certain other noisy fellows who know a thing or twelve about volume, gain, tone, and who regard the use of amplification as an instrument in its own right. Best known as a founder member of the band BIG|BRAVE (about whom, to my chagrin, I know next to nowt), this album marks Ball’s third excursion into the world of solo experimental guitar. I want to talk about Noise, about Sound, or more specifically about volume, tone, and timbre, for this is what Amplified Guitar by Mat Ball is all about.
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