hen the composer John Cage had his piece “4:33” performed in 1952, a chasm opened. There was a score (for any number of players and instruments) but no notes on the page, the idea being that the audience were to become aware of the acoustic space of the concert hall. But this could’ve been reconstructed as a con instead of a bold artistic statement, confrontational art at its best from one of the most important composers of the period- one or the other extreme and no in between, no sitting on the fence on this one.


Fast forward fifty years and here I am listening to Annette Krebs’ Guitar Solo (+tape in the last two tracks), a beautifully packaged artefact with a watercolour painting as cover art in a carded sleeve, the thing recorded in Berlin by the guitarist, no track titles and...where are the notes? The sound of the windy storm outside as I play this is louder than any of the happenings coming out of the speaker.


If you turn the volume up a sound akin to someone eating a packet of crisps is heard with a large gap of silence where nothing but the rumble of the acoustic space is heard before the next alien sound comes in. What sounds like a note is struck after six minutes (phew!). On the next track it’s a mostly-one-note at a time piece, but it’s evident from the sound produced that she has her own string theory. Track four perplexes further, the only picture emerging is of the guitarist dropping her guitar and just pouring milk into a bowl of Kellogg’s rice crispies (it goes snap, crackle and pop!), but apparently the guitar is being played.


A comparison to Japanese improv guitarist Taku Sugimoto can only go so far (Taku and Annette have recorded a duo album as well). In his wonderful Italia album, there are notes but not many of them. He plays like a child might for a while when holding the guitar for the first time- a note here and a couple of notes there but eventually that child would probably strum that guitar, or try different chords. They would learn. Whereas Taku seems to carry on in the one note every so often for 20-plus minutes, as if in love with the simplest of sounds. Annette, eventually plays recognisable notes in the Taku vein but, on the other hand, the syntax seems to be even more fractured. Motifs do not appear- there’s not much of a twang or an organic form to be found around the corner.


There is also the use of tapes, which means it can get a lot louder than Taku. In one of the last two tracks she seems to be playing in a duet with a fan (?!). Concrete-type sounds are used, but whatever the strategy, it is always followed through till the very end. But I have the feeling that I don’t know whether tape or guitar are producing the x sound I listen to at y second, so great is the level of deconstruction taking place. When the guitar, tape, acoustics melt into each other it’s a joyous thing.


The death of the guitar (especially in a rock context) is something that I have seen written about, on and off, for the last 10-15 years, but records like this and Italia show that there are many possibilities to be tapped into.