Muzag

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Member Since: 2/17/2002
Total Mixes: 55
Total Feedback: 1578

Other Mixes By Muzag

CD | Theme - Alternating DJ
CD | Theme - Alternating DJ

legato: A Personal View of the Guitar Playing of Allan Holdsworth

Artist Song
Tony Williams Lifetime  Fred (Believe It, 1975) 
Jean Luc Ponty  Enigmatic Ocean Part III [extract] (Enigmatic Ocean, 1977) 
Gong  Expresso (Expresso, 1978) 
Allan Holdsworth  Letters of Marque (i.o.u., 1982) [extract] 
Allan Holdsworth  Where is One (i.o.u., 1982) [extract] 
Allan Holdsworth  The Things You See (When You Haven't Got Your Gun) (i.o.u., 1982) [extract] 
Allan Holdsworth  Three Sheets To The Wind (Road Games, 1983) [extract] 
Allan Holdsworth  Devil Take The Hindmost (Metal Fatigue, 1985) [extract] 
Allan Holdsworth  Atavachron (Atavachron, 1986) [extract] 
Allan Holdsworth  The 4.15 Bradford Executive (Sand, 1987) [extract] 
Allan Holdsworth  Secrets (Secrets, 1989) [extract] 
Allan Holdsworth  City Nights (Secrets, 1989) 
Allan Holdsworth  Zarabeth (Wardenclyffe Tower, 1992) [extract] 
Allan Holdsworth  Ruhkukuah (Hard Hat Area, 1994) [extract] 
Gongzilla  Allan Qui (Suffer, 1995) 
Allan Holdsworth  How Deep Is The Ocean (None Too Soon, 1996) 
Allan Holdsworth  None Too Soon (None Too Soon, 1996) [extract] 
Allan Holdsworth  0274 (The Sixteen Men Of Tain, 2000) 
Allan Holdsworth  The Sixteen Men Of Tain (The Sixteen Men Of Tain, 2000) 
Allan Holdsworth  Lanyard Loop (All Night Wrong, 2002) 

Comment:

le+ga+to [ li-gS`to]
Music
adv. & adj. Abbr. leg.
In a smooth, even style without any noticeable break between the notes. Used chiefly as a direction.
n. pl. le+ga+tos
A legato passage or movement.

[Italian, past participle of legare, to bind, tie together, from Latin ligare]



Allan Holdsworth, to these ears, has recorded some dreadful shite. But then he plays in a genre that I'm not particularly attracted to, that of Fusion.

So why this mix?

My love/hate thing for Holdsworth revolves around his wonderful guitar stylings. When I first started playing guitar myself, I used to buy Guitarist magazine and one of the very first issues I bought had a cover feature on Allan Holdsworth. I was impressed by what they had to say and the phenomenal stretch the guy had over the fingerboard. Unfortunately, I had very little money and certainly not enough to risk on an album I'd never
be able to find in the wilds of Aberystwyth where I grew up.

Skip ahead a few years and the discovery of Gong's Wingful of Eyes compilation in the library. This is an album I used to lie incapacitated on the floor to and let wash around me, struck by this amazing legato lead guitar
that would burn across the room.

Who is that?

Guitar: Allan Holdsworth

So that's what he sounds like!

Unfortunately he didn't always sound like that. In the Eighties he took up with & championed SynthAxe a revolutionary guitar synthesizer that had separate fretting strings from playing strings (indeed, the neck is at an angle to the pickup strings). I could see the sense in the partnership, prior to that guitar synths had been criticised for the delay between the physical string impact and the resultant sound. Holdsworth could push out some amazingly fast runs, so if the SynthAxe could keep up with him...

But this was a big problem for me. Whilst I'm all for experimenting with the noises a guitar can make, I have always had a deep hatred of 80's synth sounds. And Allan, bless him, seemed to produce the most cheesy
DX7-preset-esque sounds from that SynthAxe.

Skip ahead to the file sharing era and it eventually occurred to me I could check out all his albums (some of which I'd owned in the past and given away) to see if I was missing anything. Well, I was. I bought a couple of his more recent releases and cherry picked from the
downloads and here's the result.

So why is he different?

Well mainly it's that legato style. Plus he has that amazing stretch which is born out a desire to play different intervals than most guitarists. Generally when a guitarist plays runs they tend to follow consecutive scale
notes. Allan consciously wanted to avoid that and so stretched to different intervals. He can also play stunning fast when he wants (he does want to quite a lot, unfortunately). But of the technically great guitarists, he is one of the few who really produce a (positive) emotional reaction in me.

So, finally you should be aware of what I have done to put this together. After picking through his back catalogue I had over 2 hours of material I liked. That doesn't fit too well on a single CD (and a double would have been too indulgent). But I realised that on the majority of his songs I only liked the guitar solo, not surprising as most of the songs are just vehicles for the solo. So what you have here is essentially a sort of 'Shut Up And Play Your Guitar' of Holdsworth's studio albums. All tracks segue/crossfade to create a 'seamless' guitarfest and all this whilst maintaining the chronological order of the material.

Phew, too much typing - I know this is a bit of a departure for me but I hope it will interest some of you...
image for mix

Feedback:

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Curtis_Burns
Date: 6/12/2004
Beautiful Gary. Excellent write-up. I've always found Holdworth's playing interesting for it's intervallic leaps (I've always heard a Dolphy debt, but, that may just be me) while never quite cared for his solo muzak. I'd be interested in this Gary.
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12vman
Date: 6/12/2004
I'm not much of a fan of "guitar gods" - yeah, you can play fast, so what? Are you playing anything worth hearing is the question I always have... ...I'm not impressed by mere showing off...
But - your write-up on Holdsworth has intrigued me. I am very unfamiliar w/his work - though I bet if I took a look through some of my stuff he'd show up (I had a big Jean Luc Ponty fetish at one point) more often than I'd expect. Anyway - I'd like to hear this -
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g.a.b. l@bs
Date: 6/12/2004
Fabulous. A great introduction to someone whose works I've never purchased, only heard, sporadically, on the local college radio station. Great cover image too.
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Thomas_Mohr
Date: 6/13/2004
Whooa, as Curtis said, the notes are excellent. As a one-time guitar-god aspirant (uh-hum), I used to adore Holdsworth's playing a lot - and who didn't at the time? I even kept many of his old albums while I sold most of the other fusion stuff I had . . . and I in fact started reappraising them in the not-so-recent past, especially his work with Tony Williams and Bill Bruford (and, er, the incredibly pompous UK, I might add . . . yes, I have my strange little hang-ups, too!). While my selection of trax would've been completely different from yours, I find this nothing less than intriguing and most definitely would like to give it a spin sooner or later. In one word: fabulous.
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Dom1
Date: 6/13/2004
I am unaware of Holdsworth but I suspect he might be on the one GONG comp that I own...I'll check it out...I thoroughly enjoyed reading yr sleeve notes and the picture is great!
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Muzag
Date: 6/13/2004
Just a few extra notes/responses:
In the 70's Holdsworth was a 'guitar for hire' and played with a number of bands. In addition to those mentioned above are Tempest, Nucleus & UK, Soft Machine, Esther Phillips (!), (Bill) Bruford, Herbie Hancock. He played in the post Daevid Allen Gong incarnation and, erm, in the 90's appeared on a Level 42 album.
i.o.u. was his first proper solo album, it took him 3 years to get it out and he had to sell his guitars to make it. Hence the title. He has disowned & legally blocked his first solo album (Velvet Darkness) which the label made from rehearsal tapes.
He original played saxophone and also plays violin. He sings badly (in the progrock style). In fact, any work he has done which involves vocals, his or others, I would avoid. :~)
Thomas speaks the truth about the pomposity of UK
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Slack-a-gogo
Date: 6/13/2004
Obviously a monsterous labor of love - from the wide ranging career coverage to the great liner notes. And the cover is top notch. And I'll agree with you that you have a lot of bland or outright bad stuff to sift through, but the man deilvers, he deilvers some wonderful songs.
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valis
Date: 6/14/2004
I'm guessing this must be beautiful..., but that be unedumacated. (Great liner notes. Enticing.)
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krautfreak
Date: 6/14/2004
fabulous. though a gong freak, i gotta admit i've always paid more attention to daevid allen and steve hillage, but these excellent liner notes have me intrigued... lemme know if you'd want to trade this for anything...
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James Jackson
Date: 6/20/2004
Impressive. Ditto everyone.
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DJ Lunch Boy
Date: 2/2/2005
You should definitely seek out the Holdsworth-era Bruford albums. Good stuff.
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doowad
Date: 11/8/2007
Thanks for the education, Gary!