Homesick for Nowhere

CD OUT OF PRINT (SOLD OUT)

The hypnotic sound of evolving melodies, built upon layered drones, (created by mini fans, e-bows and floor guitars) is a characteristic of Greg's solo performance. The melodies utilize a variety of tones and sounds created by his unusually amplified acoustic guitar. Other than the e-bow and fuzz box all sounds are created live and organically by string manipulation techniques.

MP3 Samples:
Track 1 (1:07, 326KB)
Track 3 (2:01, 589KB)
Track 8 (1:34, 458KB)

Track Listing (All tracks were recorded live with no overdubs or pre-recorded tapes. The running order of the tracks is North to South)

Lonely Woman (Ornette Coleman excerpt) (1:07, 326KB)
Equipment: floor guitar, tambourine, slide, ebow drone guitar, amplified acoustic guitar. Recorded live at Beautiful Music, Auckland.

Homesick for Nowhere (based on traditional klezmer tune)
Equipment: ebow on whammy bar floor guitar, amplified acoustic guitar. Recorded live at Beautiful Music, Auckland.

Depresso Guitar (2:01, 589KB) (based on Islamic folk tune)
Equipment: amplified lap top acoustic guitar, Ebow, slide and mini fan. Recorded live at Beautiful Music, Auckland

Chairman Mao (Charlie Haden)
Equipment: percussion – floor guitar and tambourine, mini fan drone guitar through distortion, amplified acoustic. Recorded live at Space Gallery, Wellington

Blues for Aida (Steve Lacy)
Equipment: amplified acoustic and ebow, nervous tapping on the floor guitar. Recorded live at Robert McDougall Gallery, Christchurch

Strawberry Fields (Lennon-McCartney)
Equipment: Acoustic guitar. Vocals and percussion - Jenny Ward. Recorded live at Robert McDougall Gallery, Christchurch

Oderbruch (Konrad Bauer)
Equipment: electric guitar and volume pedal, ebow drone guitar. Vocals: Jenny Ward. Recorded live at Robert McDougall Gallery, Christchurch

Incident at Owl Creek (1:34, 458KB) (based on Islamic tune)
Equipment: adapted electric, whammy floor guitar through distortion. Recorded at home, Sumner

What is the Sound of Two-handed Tapping? (based on Japanese folk tune)
Equipment: adapted electric guitar, slide and ebow. Recorded at home, Sumner

Spatula Boy ( based on Japanese folk tune)
Equipment: adapted electric guitar, spatula, violin bow, slide, ebow. Recorded at home, Sumner

Tracks 1 to 3 recorded on mini disc by Heath Reef
Track 4 recorded on mini disc by Jeff Henderson
Tracks 5 to 7 recorded on reel to reel by Bruce Russell
Tracks 8 to 10 recorded on Bruce's reel to reel by Greg Malcolm.

Homsick for Nowhere

This CD also feature's Greg Malcolm's hand built adapted electric guitar as made by local Christchurch instrument builder Peter Stephen. This guitar is unusual in that it has 2 sets of strings - the standard set and another sympathetic set of strings which runs diagonal inside the guitar body creating drones.

There are four separate playing areas:

Behind the bridge

Above the nut

Sympathetic Strings

Conventional playing area

... all of which are separately amplified.

Homesick for Nowhere is released on the Corpus Hermiticum label, not Proper Music, and is currently out of print.

Album Reviews

Dunedin Fringe Review: "Lines of Flight: He often accompanies his gorgeous guitar improvisations with two floor guitars, one played by an e-bow and the other with his foot (sometimes displaying astounding pedal dexterity); alongside this, he taps out a rhythm on the tambourine with his other foot. This is something you have to see to believe You should buy his new CD (available from Corpus Hermeticum) right now and find out how crap all the other music you've been listening to is."

The Package: "Think you know what guitar sounds like? You're wrong! You cannot truly know your guitar until you have shaken the uncut string ends in lieu of more costly percussion, rattled a tray of ball bearings around on its deck, and shoved a wooden paddle through the strings, playing on it with a violin bow. This is guitar, as experimental as those bombs you used to build in the backyard with your brother."

Dominion: "For every piece of unreserved beauty, such as Ornette Coleman's Lonely Woman, there are others that are more disturbing.On Spatula Boy, the electrification of a Japanese folk tune is both meditative and tinged with anguish. Malcolm is a master of these ambivalent moods."

David Keenan, The Wire, March 2003: "Greg Malcolm's Homesick for Nowhere, released on Russell's Corpus Hermeticum, is a solo guitar disc played on a series of prepared six strings, including one with five pickups internally resonating wires and independent tuning at both ends. A New Zealand fringe veteran, Malcolm served with Flying Nun's Breathing Cage in the mid 80s before forming the improv unit Don't Make Noise with John Kennedy. His previous solo sets consisted of conceptual song circles and radio plays but for Homesick Russell convinced Malcolm to "Shut up and play his guitar" with inspired results. The disc consists of cover versions of tracks by Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden, Steve Lacy and more, interspersed with variations on Islamic, Klezmer and Japanese folk tunes. Over drone guitar played with one foot and percussion with the other Malcolm triggers dense layers of enveloping drone into which he drops his waited notes. His customised instruments give him the reach of a miniature orchestra on tracks that range from gravity-defying improvisations of the calibre of Fushitsusha through to a version of Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman" that sounds like 1966 Velvet Underground. Malcolm dubs it "Depresso Guitar"; it's that heavy."

Chris Culter, Re'r catalogue: "An excellent CD of pieces for guitars, usually more than one at a time, played in unconventional ways - in real time - with little in the way of electronic processing but rather using electric fans, ebow, slide, violin bow, multiple simultaneous instruments. What makes it especially interesting is the content: these are interpretations of tunes by Ornette Coleman, The Beatles, Connie Bauer, Charlie Haden and of traditional Klezmer, Japanese and Islamic melodies. Very unusual, very successful. A fine work, and nicely packaged"

Lines of Flight 2004: "The highlight of the evening had to be Greg Malcolm - I've seen him play quite a few times now, and let me tell you that the sight of a man playing one guitar with his hands and one with each foot never gets old! This set also wins the award for best use of video - Jenny Ward recorded the minutiae of Greg's performance and projected it onto the ceiling, allowing those of us who weren't sitting up the front to see what was going on. Greg played beautiful melodic tunes, but also explored the sounds it was possible to get from his custom-made acoustic guitar using bows, pendulums, springs and a swag of other toys and techniques."