Conspicuous Capitalism at Work

[KILLINFO@aol.com]

Please pardon the spam. My CD has gotten another review. This time from my 
old home town rag 800 miles away.

Josef Woodard, 
Santa Barbara Independent, 
9.13-20.01

"Ted Killian is a nice enough fellow. Family man, mild-mannered, 
well-versed 
in the manipulation of ones and zeroes, PDFs and digital delay loops. 
Those 
who-knew-him-when as a local, and the graphic design point man at the 
Seymour 
Duncan compound in Goleta, knew him as a kindly sort who was missed when 
he 
packed up the clan and moved to the friendlier real estate climes of 
Oregon a 
few years ago. And then there is his alter artistic ego, also kindly, but 
also restless and wild. Killian is an electric guitar adventurer who may 
finally get some of the attention he deserves, having finally released his 
debut CD, Flux Aeterna, on the pfMENTUM label, run by his old friend and 
comrade, Santa Barbaran new-jazz maestro, Jeff Kaiser (www.pfmentum.com).

A beautiful, raucous, and ethereal maze of sounds both physical and 
digital, 
and mostly conjured with guitars, Killian obviously ignored the advice of 
anyone who might have suggested “don't try this at home.” What has 
come out 
of his garage, and his brain, is a mutant DIY jewel. Experimental, yes. 
Accessible, too, in the way that mad guitar playing in the post-Hendrix 
era 
has embedded itself in the collective ear. 

Some may have caught Killian’s very occasional live appearances, in 
Santa 
Barbara and Ventura, in which he appeared entangled in wires and chains of 
effects. To set up kinetic musical canvas situations, Killian would deploy 
looping devices, including the mythical antique, the Electro-Harmonix 
16-second digital delay unit, and sound-altering devices such as a ring 
modulator and mondo-distortion pressed into the service of grace. 

As heard on the opening track, “Hubble,” Killian doesn't spare the 
piercing 
solo guitar statements, the epic rock gesture that sounds loud no matter 
what 
volume you've dialed up. But often, those sweeping lines are laid atop 
surprisingly delicate, layered backdrops, as on “Cauterant Baptism,” 
or the 
languid distorto-toned musing drifting over “Recurvate Plaint.” 
“Leaving 
Medford” is an Oregonian-specific play on the song “Leaving 
Memphis,” but 
the vibe here is industrial and a touch foreboding, and a splinkety energy 
bubbles beneath the textural demolition derby that is “Reverse Logic.” 

But tenderness and subtlety hover about the proceedings, too. “Nocturnal 
Interstices” is an ambient collage of soaring tones and happily elusive 
structure. “Convocation Solitaire” is a sweet dream of a loop-happy 
tone 
poem, somewhat reminiscent of Bill Frisell’s first album. The title cut 
closes the album with its underwater-sounding arpeggios and unruly rock 
phrases, all dressed up in feedback and tattered timbral garb. The nice 
guy, 
the artist, the looper, and the rock riffster walk into a bar . . . and a 
church. 

For anyone wondering about the painterly expressive potential of the 
electric 
guitar, this is one prime example. One hears influential strains of artful 
gadget-tweakers David Torn and Robert Fripp here, but Killian is also onto 
something that is uniquely his own. This is the work of an open-minded, 
dogma-resistant experimentalist in a rock guitarphile’s body."


MP3s available at:  http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/138/ted_killian.html

CDs for sale at:  http://www.pfmentum.com/catalog.html