German musician Dirk Dresselhaus debuted his Schneider TM project in the late 90s. Since then he has moved away from arch electropop and towards a looser improvisational approach. Guitar Sounds is a wholly instrumental exploration of processed and prepared electric guitar.
It begins on an apocalyptic note: Landslide launches from a space between the feedback-drenched 80s output of Neil Young and the detuned clamour of his disciples Sonic Youth, before taking a late detour into the kind of crackling sonics associated with electronic artists such as Pan Sonic and Emptyset.
Teilhard suggests a form of post-industrial pastoralism, its wheezing drones charting a course from urban hell to green heaven. First Of May recalls the fractured C&W of Bill Frisell, while Elefantenhaut and the 17-minute Uberzahl suffuse the electroshock blues of the opener with a melancholy seemingly distilled from Big Star’s Sister Lovers.
In truth Guitar Sounds adds little to the secret history of the instrument (Dresselhaus is no Oren Ambarchi) but he seems less concerned with the weight of history than his own emotional and physical relationship with wood, metal and electricity.
