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April 21, 2015

Noah Wall releases 'Live at Guitar Center'

A series of surreptitious Guitar Center recordings

Entertainment Music
042015_nwgc 'Live at Guitar Center'/Noah Wall

A conceptual album of secret recordings.

The indelicate balance between experimental and noise music, between controlled chaos and cacophony, can make for a thrilling change of pace on any playlist. Sometimes it's nice to be jarred out of a train of thought by sounds that feel accidental, but also sort of work, if only to better appreciate what goes into more deliberate composition. 

New York City's experimental artist Noah Wall stretched this idea to a conceptual limit with the release of "Live at Guitar Center," a series of secret recordings he took during strolls through a Guitar Center over three days in Manhattan. 

On one hand, Wall concedes that the album is basically an unlistenable mishmash of clipped, self-conscious melodies and chords on guitars, keys and synths. They had no clue Wall was walking around with tiny microphones planted in his earbuds. 

On the other hand, it sounds a bit like a continuous collection of those treasured outtakes tucked into the crevices of certain albums, when artists are just fooling around and showing a lighter side of the recording process.

What Wall found most enlightening about the experiment was the way it revealed the unspoken rules of a music store. In his interview with NPR, he described the courteous interplay between shoppers of different skill levels:  

"It kind of reminds me ... of a watering hole where all these different animals go from different levels of the food-chain, and while they're there they suspend trying to eat each other."
The best/worst part of "Live at Guitar Center" is the way it takes an in-store experience that's usually a bit maddening and turns it into something that can be appreciated simply for the enjoyment of testing out instruments.

Here's a sampling.



Check out the rest of Wall's otherwise enjoyable song craft at his website

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