ZAIMPH - The Undetermined Dyad

"Edition of 300 copies, with sleeves featuring original artwork by Marcia Bassett, all silkscreened by Alan Sherry of SIWA and with a full-color insert. Expertly mastered by Tom Carter of Charalambides. Za_ɬØmph is working cover for the solo experiments of Marcia Bassett, formerly of Un and Double Leopards, currently of GHQ and Hototogisu. The Undetermined Dyad functions as the fulcrum of her career to date, looking back towards her experiments in group levitation with Double Leopards while extrapolating on her recent solo work. Most of all its a guitar record and one that sits comfortably alongside previous six-string monoliths like John Faheys Days Have Gone By, Donald Millers A Little Treatise On Morals and Masayuki Takayanagis Live At Zojoji Hall while sounding quite unlike any of them. Bassetts re-imagining of the instrument pushes it to the point of almost translucence, where the physical fact of the guitar itself is almost completely subsumed by echo, F/X, loops and the kind of improvisatory logic that prizes infinite expansion and organic growth over repeated tropes or riffs. Aspects of the first side -- the eerie ghost voices, the deep space echo -- recall the electrified ritual of nomadic Japanese avant gardists Taj Mahal Travellers but more immediately it sounds like a magnification of her individual contribution to Double Leopards, generating towers of electricity that move from malevolent arcs of anti-gravity and spumes of throttled single notes through to deep wormholes that do violence to feeble notions of time and space. The B-side is a little more aggressive, with the tactile sound of strings on pick-ups anchoring a gorgeous wash of all-consuming drone and garage band fuzz before Bassett cranks the tone into realms of total sonic reducer. If your concept of the guitar begins with Jimi Hendrix setting the fucking thing on fire and ends with the sound of voltage completely liberated from any kind of tonal or harmonic anchor whatsoever, then this record may well be the girl youve been praying for. But you wont wanna introduce her to your parents. --David Keenan, Glasgow, April 2008.