Two guitarists with wild and bold aesthetics met for no cost – Kost Nix, an explosive, freewheeling set at the Vekks arts space in Vienna (a place that borrows Miles Davis’ motto: don’t fear mistakes, there are none). The two guitarists are ex-pats in their adopted hometowns – Viennese, American guitarist Eric Arn, the leader of the Primordial Undermind band, and Israeli, New York-based Eyal Maoz, an essential part of John Zorn’s circle, but both felt at home immediately with this live session from October 2021.
Arn and Maoz soon discovered they share many sonic interests and ideas. Often it is impossible to know who is doing what. They build on the opening, 20-minute piece «Quiet Concessions» massive walls of sound, delicate and raw, strange, poetic and totally weird at the same time. Byron Coley of the Feeding Tube Records, who released four previous duos of Arn, hears in this piece echoes of early Grateful Dead, and Sonic youth, but you can add Fred Frith’s Massacree and Sonny Sharrock’s Last Exit. This piece is completely unpredictable, psychedelic and dreamy but progresses according to its own inner logic.
The following, shorter «Luminous Motion» dive deeper into experimental regions and expands the innovative vocabularies of such sonic searchers like Derek Bailey, Hans Reichel and Bill Orcutt, spiced with hypnotic bluesy twangs and abstract, noisy drones. The last «Optimus Locus ad Finem» takes another turn and builds a suggestive tension patiently as if Arn and Maoz instantly compose a soundtrack for a mysterious and unsettling story. Hopefully, this inspired meeting will trigger more collaborative work of Arn and Maoz.
Eyal Hareuveni
Eric Arn (el.g), Eyal Maoz (el.g)
