Stephen O’Malley’s 5 + 1 Top Guitarists
Stephen O’Malley
John Abercrombie
I first heard John Abercrombie in Amsterdam at Tos from Sunn O)))’s house when I was staying up there and he was playing some of the records, including Timeless, which is a really beautiful record with Jack DeJonette and Jan Hammer. I got really interested in his music. He was an amazing guitar player. He had a lot of feeling in his playing that really resonates with me. Another record I want to mention is Gateway with Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette. There’s also Gateway 2 with that same trio. There’s another record he made with Collin Walcott called Cloud Dance that’s really beautiful as well. He’s the kind of player with a sensitivity in his playing which has been really enrapturing to listen to over the years.
Caspar Brötzmann
He’s an incredible guitar player from Germany. I became aware of him in the early 90s through his band Massaker who I first heard through Greg from Sunn O))) whose old band, Engine Kid, toured with him in the early 90s. There’s one album called Koksofen that is an unbelievably heavy record. His playing involves a lot of feedback, percussion - sort of like extended technique playing. He’s a fantastic player. I’ve come to know him a bit over the years. He toured with Sunn O))) on one of the last tours we did in 2019. Terrific person. He’s also a great painter and his artwork is what’s used on the covers of Massaker records. There’s one called Black Axis that’s got an incredible group of songs as well. He’s still doing music now - he focuses more on bass guitar. I’ve listened to everything I could of his. He’s working on new music with a drummer I used to play with, Tim Wyskida, and that’s really exciting. I haven’t heard that yet but I’m very curious about it.
Pete Cosey
For our band, I think Miles Davis is probably the touchstone that most everyone agrees on as very important. A lot of those records that Miles made in the late 60s and early 70s are ones that we have been particularly inspired by. They’re some of the best records ever made. Pete Cosey played guitar on some of those records. He passed away a few years ago. I was reading a biography about him. I didn’t know much about him. He was using a lot of fuzz on his guitar playing and feedback. I saw some amazing videos from that period too, his look is just full on, the real deal. His career seemed to be pretty compact, compared to a lot of other players from that period. There aren’t a lot of records with him on them. But he played on Electric Mud by Muddy Waters and on Agharta by Miles. He’s credited with synthesizer and percussion. He’s on Pangaea as well. Those were kind of the last recordings before Miles went into hibernation and they’re quite out there, really amazing records.
Michio Kurihara
Michio Kurihara is a Japanese guitar player from the underground heavy psych scene from the 90s in Tokyo. He was in a band called White Heaven and he was in a band called The Stars after that. He played with Damon and Naomi a lot and he also played with Boris. He’s always been very humble. He’s kind of an unsung genius I think by his own hand. He’s a bit ego-less which is quite remarkable for a guitar player as abstract and out there as he is.
I’ve had the opportunity to record with him. I made a record called Ensemble Pearl with him and Atsuo from Boris, and Bill Herzog who plays in Sunn O))) and Jesse Sykes and many other bands. Working with Michio in the studio has been really inspiring. He uses multiple Space Echoes and multiple specialized gain pedals and he makes these incredible feedback landscape sounds. And then he’ll do a head ripping treble guitar lead, fuzz lead. He’s really awesome.
Takashi Mizutani
He’s more of a legend, maybe even a mythology than a person. It seems like the story around him has been created decades after he was actually playing on the recordings that people are talking about, which were with a band called Les Rallizes Dénudés, formed in the late 60s. He played a lot in these mythical, mythological recordings from that period, using incredible amounts of feedback and volume. It seems either super ahead of its time or super influenced by John Cage or contemporary art. When you listen to a lot of Japanese rock and psychedelic bands in retrospect and consider the climate of that style of music at the time, I’m most fascinated that the filter of Japanese culture applied to something like psychedelic rock music or Motown music. There’s a singer and musicologist named Julian Cope who’s written a book called Japrocksampler and he talks about that idea a lot. I think it’s really interesting. There’s a lot written about this guy, Mizutani, and that band has many stories. I think he’s really fascinating. I love those recordings.
(Bonus!) Keijo Haino
I like thinking about Keijo Haino as a bonus, too. There’s a relation with the last two players and not just because he’s from Japan. I think there’s probably a story in the underground loud music scene. Haino is the first of those three that I discovered in the 90s with his band Fushitsusha. I heard the first two albums they released on P.S.F. and became obsessed with the band. They were playing 20 or 30 minute long songs that were very abstract with a lot of feedback, singing in Japanese. The aesthetic of the record covers was just black on black or gray on black or silver on black - super mysterious - and it’s that mystery that is so compelling because your imagination is allowed to roam in that massive area that’s not spelled out for you, and that’s what happened with Fushitsusha for me. Several years later I got to see Haino play in New York a few times, and I eventually met him when Sunn O))) was playing in Canada. A few years later I started playing music with him in a band called Nazoranai. Oren Ambarchi played drums, I played bass guitar and then Haino was the front man. He’s an incredible guitar player and I’ve been endlessly inspired by him, by his playing, and also endlessly challenged by the times I’ve played with him. It’s 90% improvised and 90% of the time the improvisation starts to settle into a structure, he will change at that moment. He plays eight or ten hour concerts. He has tremendous courage and ability, playing many different instruments, and continually exploring. His legacy is really interesting musically but also as an artist. He’s one of those musicians I would urge everyone who plays guitar or is into experimental music to see at least once. The live performance is incredible.
Below is a playlist including selections from Sunn O))) as well as Stephen and Greg’s other projects and favorite musicians / bands / composers.
Photo of Stephen O’Malley by Manon Clavelier.
