Parish, Shane

Parish, Shane

Autechre Guitar

Palilalia

This record shouldn’t, strictly speaking, be possible at all.It’s not just that Autechre’s music is electronic and Shane Parish’s is acoustic. It’s not just that Autechre come from electro and techno, while Shane’s solo guitar music is rooted in jazz, folk, and the blues. Those borders, between mediums and genres, are as porous as you want them to be. But Autechre are synonymous with difficulty, opacity, inscrutability—known for unparseable rhythms, cryptic riffs, and shapeshifting timbres. Even on their early records, before they’d begun building out the mind-bending software systems that have defined the past quarter-century of their music, the duo of Sean Booth and Rob Brown were working at the very limits of their machines: eking melodies out of drum sounds, programming intricate polyrhythms of superhuman complexity, and writing sequences that defy attempts to decipher them. I’ve been listening to “Yulquen” for 31 years, and I still couldn’t tell you just what is happening between the melody and the beat; try as I might, I simply can’t count out the steps.Now take Shane: one guy, one guitar, two hands. Six strings. Ten fingers. (Throw in a tapping foot for when the timekeeping gets tricky.) That’s the sum total of what he’s working with. These are not the kinds of tools you’d think would be equipped for Autechre’s music. But if anyone could take on a project like this, it’s Shane. Informed by his years spent playing standards as a working musician in supper clubs and resorts around Asheville, North Carolina,...

Parish, Shane

Solo at Cafe OTO

Red EFT

***Melodies are alive, remolded and reshaped in each performance. Guitarist Shane Parish embraces this continual evolution by transcribing songs from across musical genres, instruments, and eras for solo guitar. Recent albums like 2024’s Repertoire, which features 14 songs across jazz, folk, and electronic music and played on acoustic guitar, showcase his skill in transcription, as does his work transforming Bill Orcutt’s Four Guitars from a multi-tracked solo project into a quartet played live by four musicians. His practice is that of musical curiosity and technical virtuosity, highlighting all the ways a good song can be unraveled and sewn back together into something new.On Solo At Cafe Oto, Parish presents six poignant ballads reimagined for solo electric guitar as played at London’s legendary venue in fall 2023. A European tour with the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet brought him to the venue; they did a one-off show at Cafe Oto in which each member of the group played a solo set. It ended up being a special night, one of those shows in which there’s magic in the room forged by a shared love of music.Many of the songs Parish chose to perform that evening hold a sense of mysteriousness, something immersive and intriguing to get lost in. He picked them—some of which had stayed with him for many years—because of their attention to atmosphere. It’s a characteristically eclectic vision: Three songs are by John Jacob Niles, a Kentucky balladeer whom Parish had developed a deep knowledge of over recent years, two...

Parish, Shane

Repertoire

Palilalia

"Imagine: It’s sometime in the back half of the 19th century, America. You’re sitting in the parlor of your mansion, or in the only room of your shack; things are dusty and smell like sweat and hair, no matter how wealthy you may be. You don’t own a phonograph, and you don’t know who Tony Hawk is, but you have an inkling of how good the word 'shred' is going to feel when it enters the local slang. Suddenly, a tall, elegant figure with beautifully maintained fingernails emerges from some corner of the room, carrying a guitar. He says in a soft voice, 'I have a transmission for you, from the coming few centuries. Would you like to hear it? I figured you wouldn’t have a dongle, so I brought my guitar.' You may be apprehensive, but you shouldn’t be. Shane happens to be an internationally renowned virtuoso of the guitar. Specifically, he’s the kind of virtuoso who is as deep on style as he is on technique. His technical prowess is almost maddeningly complete; aiming paradoxically for the yards-long target called “breadth” he’s somehow hit all of it, 500 arrows piercing every pore of the landscape. He has that much technique not for the sake of guitar worship but to best bring the music forth clearly and in his own hand, like a pearl formed in a specific sea. I know this because I’ve sat next to him in multiple countries and American states and seen him deliver transmissions...