Over Fred Frith's 3rd OTO residency, Frith was paired with various stellar local musicians, including bassist John Edwards and drummer Mark Sanders. On July 7th, Frith was joined by fellow New Yorker but now London local Christian Marclay in what was, incredibly, their first collaboration since the 80s when they were both prime movers in New York’s creatively vital ‘downtown’ jazz scene.

We later pressed this recording in a very special edition of 100 to raise funds for new equipment, so huge thanks to the pair for their generosity on this one.

From a review of the evening by Dalston Sound:

"Frith got the first set underway playing his guitar, like a snare drum, with the flats of a pair of paint brushes, Marclay underscoring the percussive effect with a driving, rhythmic loop while allowing an occasional flicker of Wurlitzer whorl to bleed through.

Frith, playing his array of fx boxes and pedals barefoot, allowed a subtle middle east inflection to colour his harmonics, as his soloing mirrored the sonic slippage and elisions of Marclay’s turntablism.

Frith slipped over to the OTO piano to play allusively classical counterpoint some playful cartoon cut-ups and antique pop sampling from Marclay, only for Marclay to respond with some playful mirroring, dropping the needle onto some classical guitar grooves.

When Marclay’s turntablism became more abstract, Frith countered with deliciously melodic filigree guitar. His response to a burst of repetitive beats that segued into tribal percussives was, by contrast, a series of choppy, flamenco-inflected figures.

As the night’s first set neared its end and Marclay’s playing became denatured and abstract, Frith moved back to the piano, at first plucking delicately on its harp and then essaying a mournful, fractured melody.

The second set contained a similarly dazzling variety of colour and texture: Frith plundered his arsenal of preparations in a spirit of sheer sonic adventure, de-tuning long sustains in a mirroring of Marclay’s manual varispeed manipulations; Marclay then responded to clean, classical-sounding guitar playing (“like sunlight glinting on an azure sea”, I noted), with tight, grainy loops of operatic vinyl.

When Frith’s abstractions grew abrasive, Marclay turned to playing his decks with slabs of vinyl, scraping an album across a tone arm and stabbing it percussively into the turntable casing. Back at the piano, Frith responded jauntily to looped bongo rhythms, briefly evoking the 50s American fad for kitsch exotica.

Toward the end of the set Frith returned to the piano, and stayed there for the encore. The sensitive melody he played to close the main set became a nostalgic reverie when offset by a grainy, looped vinyl run-out groove, and he accompanied more obfusc vinyl noise, punctuated by foghorn blats and intercut with string samples, with woozy barroom nostalgia, lightening his touch to silence as Marclay stripped his sound down to the stillness of vibrating electricity."