Guitar Improvisations & Tashi Dorji

These two albums were originally issued solely on cassette by Headway Recordings, a now-defunct local label in Asheville, North Carolina, in 2012 and 2013; this reissue marks their debut on vinyl. Renowned for his immediate, experimental and gradually unfolding textural improvisations, the two were among Dorji’s first recordings. Born and raised in Bhutan, Dorji moved to the US in 2000, and has released music both solo and collaboratively with multiple US-based musicians. Influenced by the late Derek Bailey and others, Guitar Improvisations was the result of his first improvisational session, recorded in a friend’s semi-studio basement – “like improvisation walked in and there was a volcanic eruption,” says Dorji. The album moves from a repeating idea that gradually evolves to finger plucking extraordinaire. Metrical sections end in sudden stops, harmonics meet glissandi caused by strings retuning, snippets of melodies are counterbalanced by plucking beyond the guitar’s bridge, and chordal textures couple to single resonant tones given considerable vibrato. The self-titled second album was recorded when Dorji was visiting student colleagues who had access to studio facilities at a local university. It feels much more prepared, but also more experimental. He admits he had worked out a series of timbral, harmonic and dynamic ideas in advance, but he also rejects comfortable vamps and metric passages. In sum, although the two albums are by a Bhutanese American, they have little to do with Bhutan, but they do neatly cover the cornucopia of experimental jazz improvisation.