Alan Courtis & David Grubbs, Braintrust of Fiends and Werewolves
On Braintrust of Fiends and Werewolves the Buenos Aires-based Alan
Courtis—composer and artist, Reynols mainstay, prolific collaborator heads to the studio in Brooklyn with David Grubbs, himself in unprecedented form after a wild run of duos with Ryley Walker, Manuel Mota, and Jan St. Werner.
Anyone who’s scratched the surface of Alan’s discography knows he’s a monster guitarist (dig, for example, his duo
with Tetuzi Akiyama), a sensitive monster guitarist and a monster of sensitivity, period. Evidently those endless hours of playing guitar while watching television in 2020 and beyond did Grubbs good—like Erik Satie deciding in middle age to study medieval music.
If Grubbs formerly was the quintessential songwriter surrounded by improvisers, now it seems he just plays. Here’s how David describes the session: “Alan was in town and we went for it. We had shared a bill before, had listened to one another’s work forever, but never had the opportunity to pick up instruments and go at it. The pandemic made me take seriously the fact that we live more than 5,000 miles apart, so don’t assume that chances will always come again. I was amazed by the sounds that Alan squeezed out of a junior-sized Squier Strat (exactly the kind that Loren Connors plays now) his brother scored for him for ease of travel. He’s always ready to go with whatever he has at hand—that’s part of his vision. The miracle of the recording studio suited us well; each time we stopped and started again it was a different gig, a different situation. Even after laying down a couple of hours of recordings, it felt like we could have kept going and going.” The pieces on Braintrust of Fiends and Werewolves range from spontaneous pop and earworm music to monolithic riffing to acoustic tracery to distortion texture study to delicately hypnotic balancing act. Vastly different from the sum of the parts, throw away that old math . . .
credits
released September 8, 2023
Alan Courtis: electric and acoustic guitars
David Grubbs: electric and acoustic guitars
Recorded November 30, 2022 by Mitch Rackin at Deep Dive, Brooklyn. Mixed by DG
and Mitch Rackin at Deep Dive; mastered by Jack Callahan. Thanks to Ryley Walker,
Graham Lambkin, and Blank Forms.
Cover image: Graham Lambkin, Silk Lion (2018)
All music by Courtis (SGAE) and Grubbs (Gastr Virgo Music, BMI).
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