New to You: Braxton/Matis "Death Slug 2000" (2000)

Ty Braxton has a new solo album coming out next month on Warp Records. Let us celebrate via shameless self-promotion.

I went to graduate school at the Hartt School of Music. While I was there, Ty was a fellow composition student. We had some seriously overlapping interests so we talked often about playing together sometime. Towards the end of my last semester we made sometime into an actual time.

We got together one afternoon and did some improvising. Nothing planned in advance - just feeling things out on the fly. We recorded it. Here it is.

At the time, Ty was doing lots of rhythmic loop-based stuff. He called it "guitar techno." This recording has none of it. Plenty of looping, but all texture - no groove. It's two long tracks (about 30 min. each) of guitar noise. If that kind of thing floats your boat, it's a sweet ride.

We originally released it as a CDr on the Metatron Press label. We did a short tour at the time, along with another friend from Hartt, Eric Bernasek. One of the best shows was in Eric's backyard. I remember the Pittsburgh date pretty well, too. That was the first time I heard El Guapo and they were awesome. The next year I played one other show with Ty at an art gallery in Hartford.

You can still order a CDr copy from Metatron Press. If you do, I'll make one for you. It's much more economical to download it, though...

You can stream the whole thing, or buy it for only $3. (Link)