Black Truffle present In Real Life, the latest in a flurry of releases from Berlin-based guitarist and composer Julia Reidy. Having drawn acclaim for solo performances on 12-string acoustic guitar that bridge microtonality, ‘American primitive’ stylings and classic minimalism, Reidy’s recent releases have utilised an increasingly broad sonic palette, fleshing out guitar-based composition with electronics, field recordings, and – most strikingly – heavily auto-tuned vocals. On In Real Life, Reidy pushes one step further, crafting an epic LP-length suite that moves from abstracted song to lush electronics and explorations in contemporary musique concrète. Beginning with a passage of eerie electronics and creaking percussive interjections, Reidy’s heavily auto-tuned voice quickly takes centre stage. Surrounded by explosions of electric guitar and synthesised arpeggios, the auto-tuned voice delivers a melancholic ode, bringing together poetic images to reflect on the instability of experience and mutability of identity in a contemporary world saturated by digital technology. This concern with the unsettled relationship between the physical and digital is reflected musically by the constantly shifts in emphasis between Reidy’s physically demanding guitar-picking and the various forms of synthesis deployed. Similarly, the dynamic imagery of cutting, shattering, and ‘racing streams’ present in Reidy’s lyrics also serves to characterise the structure of In Real Life, which ceaselessly shifts between distinct episodes. The song-based opening, long sequences of frenetic 12-string guitar shadowed and eventually overtaken by synth tones, passages of delicate chiming harmonics, electro-acoustic cut-ups – each flows seamlessly into the next, often recurring throughout the record’s duration, which lingers over interstitial moments between these episodes. -- Mixed and mastered by Joe Talia at Good Mixture, Tokyo. Vinyl cut at 45rpm for maximum fidelity by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin. Artwork by Suze Whaites. LP desgn by Lasse Marhaug.

Black Truffle is pleased to announce World in World, the latest solo offering from prolific Berlin-based guitarist-composer Julia Reidy. Where the recent trilogy of LP releases – brace, brace (Slip, 2019), In Real Life (Black Truffle, 2019), and Vanish (Editions Mego, 2020) – focussed on increasingly lush electronic settings for Reidy’s propulsive fingerpicking and auto-tuned vocals, arranged into wide-ranging side-long epics, World in World finds Reidy refocusing on the core elements of their approach while simultaneously pushing into challenging new areas. Comprising nine pieces ranging between two and seven minutes in length, the album’s opening title track promptly introduces the distinctive palette of just-intoned electric guitars, subtle electronic processing, and voice that is rigorously explored throughout.Where much of Reidy’s guitar work on previous recordings explored rapidly pulsed cycling figures, here notes often hang in the air in a more spacious, lyrical fashion. The elasticity of rhythm and non-linear repetition of pitches initially suggests improvisation until the listener becomes aware of the precise arrangements of spatialised lines. At times, World in World suggests classic bedroom electric guitar works of the 1990s such as Loren Connors’ Airs or Roy Montgomery’s Scenes from the South Island; like those works, Reidy’s possesses a wonderfully live ambience, with frequent pedal clicks adding to the music’s powerful sense of intimacy. In Reidy’s case, however, the yearning, melancholic mood of Connors or Montgomery is tempered by the unorthodox guitar tuning, which at points produces a unique and uncomfortable effect somewhere between the hyper-precision of Harry Partch or Lou Harrison and Jandek’s slack-stringed descent into the void.While World in World plots out its terrain with a bold single-mindedness that allows some pieces to appear almost as variations on a common theme, subtle changes in emphasis distinguish each track. Tactile percussive interjections skitter across the tremolo tones of ‘Paradise in Unrecognisable Colours’, while ‘Ajar’ ramps up the role played by the electronics, with glitching pitch-shifted and back-masked textures threaded through the guitars and thickly harmonised vocal layers. Ranging from autotuned melodic lines to buried murmurs, Reidy’s voice is a frequent presence throughout these nine pieces, at times creating the impression that a more conventional series of songs lurks underneath the chiming microtonal guitars. On the stunning ‘Poised’, whispers and distant, ghostly wails surround the layers of guitars, at times suggesting the foggiest outer reaches of Liz Harris’ Grouper. Both rigorously experimental and emotive, World in World is undoubtedly Julia Reidy’s finest work yet. 

First ever meeting between two of the foremost purveyors of augmented guitar sounds working today, Oren Ambarchi and Julia Reidy. The set took place at OTO on the first night of a three-day event celebrating the life of Peter Rehberg, whose shocking and untimely death left such a hole in so many of the extended communities relating to OTO's programme. Such an emotionally charged atmosphere in the room could easily have proved overwhelming but Ambarchi and Reidy prove more than equal to the moment. Beginning with bright motes of sound that flicker and whirl around the space, the pair take their time, creating a slowly expanding sonic promontory, both bright-eyed and reflective. From this point they dive in, submerging the audience in increasingly dense chordal washes that inexorably build into a deep ocean swell of sound, dazzling on the surface but with monumental, shifting currents surging beneath. As the last fragments drift and dissipate, we are left with a clear, revitalised expanse, and a fitting epitaph to an incredibly influential figure. -- Mastered by Joe Talia

One way to spot a rip current in the ocean is to search for a rippled surface surrounded by still water. When many different currents are pulling in different directions, a rippling effect is created on the water's surface. This piece is for 4 unamplified electric guitars. It’s in a 13-limit tuning that I've been exploring in various contexts recently.  Over the the piece's duration, the guitars are tuned up or down at specific points, so that they cross each other, moving from a close cluster to a spread voicing over three octaves. As the frequencies push away or pull towards each other, the stillness is disrupted, sometimes only subtly, other times quite chaotically. At times many shifts happen at once, at other times the movement is against a backdrop of static pitches. -- Julia Reidy - 4 unamplified guitars -- Recorded in 2021 Mastered by Oliver Barrett Album cover photo courtesy of Adam Pultz Melbye