Dorji, Tashi

Dorji, Tashi

low clouds hang, this land is on fire

Drag City

***For his third new album release for Drag City, Tashi Dorji turns to the electric guitar. After the furious acoustic improvisations that drove the previous two—Stateless and we will be wherever the fires are lit—it’s easy to imagine an album of his electric guitar improvisations as an encompassingly incendiary essay. Especially when titled low clouds hang, this land is on fire. After all, this is a man capable of tearing up the place with the tactile musical violence of Bill Orcutt and Derek Bailey! And yet, this knowledge serves to set up a greater shock: the album’s disarmingly gentle musical drift.When asked why he turned the knob down from 11 for this album, Tashi says simply, “To find the silence.” As ever with Tashi, this is a political statement. Even the search for silence takes intention and happens for a reason. In this time of such institutional inhumanity, what is there to feel but exhaustion? When seeing the faces of the deprived, what is there to feel other than hopelessness? In the face of such grief, what words are there to say?So, Tashi got a couple amps, moved from the shed where he’d done his first two DC titles, set up in a room in the family home with high ceilings and dialed in the reverb. Once the sound was in the space, reflecting in a manner that he felt congenial with his mood, he taped it. It’s a striking signal, meditative and melancholy, with a delicacy comparable to the...

Dorji, Tashi

we will be wherever the fires are lit

Drag City

***Four years separate the release of Stateless and we will be wherever the fires are lit. In the interim, Tashi Dorji has seldom stood still, playing and touring almost constantly, continuing to record both as a solo and in collaboration with artists including Susie Ibarra, Alex Zhang Hungtai, Bill Orcutt, Michael Zerang, Elliott Sharp, Audrey Chen, Sally Gates, Marshall Trammell, Efrim Manuel Menuck, Aaron Turner, Dave Rempis and Joe McPhee. For Tashi, the playing of this music is always political even in its most abstract iterations. In and of itself, music can’t solve political problems—but since no moment of life is without its political context, “strumming in opposition to the towers” is therefore a universal state, a freedom of expression made while doing all the other things involved with playing, maintaining a sense of lineage and documenting forward movement. we will be wherever the fires are lit was recorded over a period of a month on a Zoom recorder in a cabin behind Tashi’s home. His music, as ever, is all improvised, using different guitar preparations—tape for muting, and metal for buzz. Different tunings and techniques; inspirations from all over. Tashi’s sound is his own, but we can’t help but feel the sound of many nations, in all hemispheres, storming through these acoustic expressions. Who else would it be for, if not for everyone?

Dorji, Tashi

Guitar Improvisations

Drag City

***One of two early cassette-only titles from the renowned guitar improviser Tashi Dorji originally released a decade ago—this reissue marks it's debut on vinyl. “Guitar Improvisation and Tashi Dorji are the first physical releases of my guitar improvisations. They were put out by a small local, now defunct, label called Headway Recording in 2012 and 2013. The friends who ran the label had heard some of my guitar music and reached out to me about doing a cassette release. Guitar Improvisations was really my first recording of improvisation—in a semi-studio setting at my friend’s basement space. It really was a formative time for me because it felt like everything opened, as far as the possibilities of what music-making meant. Like improvisation walked in and then there was a volcanic eruption..."—Tashi Dorji

Dorji, Tashi

Tashi Dorji

Drag City

***One of two early cassette-only titles from the renowned guitar improviser Tashi Dorji originally released a decade ago—this reissue marks it's debut on vinyl. "The self-titled session was recorded at a nice studio at the local university here in Asheville. I had some friends that were studying music there and had access to studio time. This session focused more on extended/prepared guitar ideas. My interest in percussive elements of sounds, timbre, harmonics, and dynamics plays a lot in this recording.”—Tashi Dorji

Dorji, Tashi

Solo Acoustic Vol. 13

Vin Du Select Qualitite

***Rarely has a guitarist emerged with as distinctive and singular a voice as TASHI DORJI has with this series of nylon-string improvisations. Recorded in the U.S. and Bhutan, VDSQ solo acoustic Volume 13 stands as a defining document of a great 21st Century guitarist.

Dorji, Tashi

Appa

Bathetic

***Appa—meaning “father” in Dzongkha—is Bhutan-by-way-of Asheville, NC guitarist TASHI DORJI’s debut release for Bathetic Records. With Appa, Dorji paints winding and expansive images with both patient and dizzying guitar movements. Intricate and delicate, strong and poetic; Appa comes across as a record brimming with energy, vitality and life while expressing emotions of loss and strength and family and distance.

Dorji, Tashi

S/t

Hermit Hut

Received a 7.1 rating from Pitchfork. Tashi Dorji grew up in Bhutan, on the eastern side of the Himalayas. Access to any music created outside the country is limited, as are most cultural options, given the geologically isolation of the country. How Dorji went from a life so remote to developing his innovative and revelatory guitar style is mind-boggling. Yearning for access to the world outside, Dorji pursued and obtained a fully-paid scholarship to a liberal arts school in Asheville, NC, in his early twenties. He’s since settled in there (save a short stint in Maine), soaking up a vast array of music, most notably the works of Derek Bailey and John Zorn. Along the way, Dorji developed a playing style unbound by tradition, yet with a direct line to intuitive artistry. His recordings feature improvisations that spasmodically grow along tangential, surprising paths. All references break loose during a composition, as Dorji keys into his own inner world. After a handful of cassettes on various labels, Dorji presents his first proper album on Hermit Hut, the label created by Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance) and inspired by spreading word of Dorji’s talents. The six compositions here are hand-picked by Dorji and Chasny as the most representative and far-reaching of his recordings. Taken together, they announce a new guitar music unlike anything being made today.