Byron Coley's review in The Wire, May 2003
Andy Beta's review in Pitchfork, May 19th, 2003
David Fricke's review in Rolling Stone, May 15, 2003
review in Baltimore City Paper
review in Trouser Press

Rhys Chatham
An Angel Moves Too Fast to See: Selected Works 1971-1989
[Table of the Elements; 2003]
Rating: 9.1

from Pitchfork

There can be only one King of New York. Ask Christopher Walken. Even when Dubya visited the smoking holes at Ground Zero, he deferred to then-King Rudy Guiliani. So it goes in the art world: who else but Matthew Barney could command the entire Guggenheim and have Björk sire his child?
New York sets up more of a duality in its music worlds: there's always contention and tension in the air of premieres, the two lords evenly matched and equally powerful, landing formidable punches with each new expression. In jazz you have John Zorn and William Parker; way back when, it was Bird and Diz blowing, first together, then at crosswinds. Unearthed tapes from folks like Tony Conrad, John Cale, and Charlemagne Palestine continually contest the supposed reign of minimalist La Monte Young; into the seventies, Steve Reich and Phillip Glass were upping the inverse ante with their ensemble sizes (6 marimbas to 12 Parts to 18 Musicians).

In the eighties, it was the rock muck of Sonic Youth and Swans, exchanging asphalt-hard blows on audiences' ears like long-banged champs. Further underground, there was the guitar-symphony battle for supremacy between avid pupil Glenn Branca and teacher Rhys Chatham, an arms race of detuned six-strings building up to Hundred Guitar Armies the likes of which Tommy Garrett never imagined during the cold war—Branca even marched them through the World Trade Plaza way back in the early 21st Century. While leaner Branca has released ten symphonies on disc, master Chatham has been neglected.

Consider this the Equalizer. The Bomb. Chatham's got The Box.

"Two Gongs" opens this set, a piece composed in 1971 but appearing here as documented in 1988. It seems simple, even in the hazy dawn of American Minimalism; less concerned with the piano patterns of Terry Riley and La Monte, and more with the pure physicality of sine waves pursued by Maryann Amacher and Charlemagne Palestine in their electronic work, Chatham found as much kif-kin in each hit of Chinese gongs as he did in his work with the early Buchla synthesizer (the cornerstone technology of the Intermedia Center at NYU in the late sixties). The resulting investigation of these gongs sounds not so much like an idealized Music of the Spheres as it is a "Music of Two Enormous Fucking Ball Bearings the Size of Jupiter Grinding Together like Electric Teenagers". Heavenly, yes, but with enough sharp metal shavings and distorted sparks as to spray in your eyes over its sixty minutes.

For those who won't find an hour's worth of gong vibration invigorating, head directly to disc two. Buzzing and bursting forth with six guitars on "Die Donnergötter", Chatham's motley crew—featuring future Illbient-blower Ben Neill, ex-Modern Lover Ernie Brooks, Susan Stenger from Band of Susans, and the Dictators' drummer—plows down a speedy superhighway of black tar rock and roll, paving the space between Television's ascendant Marquee Moon and Neu!'s motorik downbeat. The overlapping dust storms of tones kicked up by way of the guitar stretch far over the horizon of detuned, droning rock, a point reiterated over and over again as the set continues.

Aside from the Lee Renaldo-penned epiphany from 1977, wedged into the 140-page booklet, "Guitar Trio" succinctly lays out the career trajectory for Sonic Youth in eight sustaining minutes. With David Linton providing a kicked-kit push on drums, three open-tuned guitars let flow pure, humming-head streams that quickly become a current of cascading electrified overtones and sheer delight. From this body of sonic wash came all other noisy guitars for the next thirty years, to fill their respective canteens: Mars, Theoretical Girls, Band of Susans, Ut, Swans, and the aforementioned Youth, even latter day practitioners of sonic overload ranging from My Bloody Valentine to the Trail of Dead. No matter who it inspired, the piece proves that no one quite had the vessel—the distillation process—much less quenched any thirst for tone overload quite like Rhys during those hectic times. The fact that the third guitarist on this piece (Branca) would explore the same ideas to even greater success reveals the wellspring Chatham had loosed in New York City.

"Drastic Classicism" is far more fast and furious than its "minimal" tag would lead you to believe. Four chariots roll on fiery Brimstone tires in a savage Drive Like Jehu drag race; the noise on these tracks is more than most ensembles could ever hope to hit, but not even Jehu could keep up with these gear changes, flowing and grinding until the wheels fall off, even burning through the re-entry that "Eliminator Jr." brought at the end of Daydream Nation.

Variables focused on in previous works—volume, trajectory, velocity—culminate in Rhys' final revelation of electric guitar with the title work, "An Angel Moves Too Fast to See". Scored for one hundred guitars and toured throughout Europe, it's the only one of three such pieces that has ever been documented, premiering here. Despite the sheer impossibility of recording one hundred guitars and accurately conveying that force, there are huge movements from the group, roving from Chatham's classic colossal bustle into "Interstellar Overdrive"-like drift, even into a curious place that resembles...a hundred dudes playing the opening punches of "Eye of the Tiger".

Dump out his peripheral role-playing: the work with Morton Subotnick in the sixties, his time tuning harpsichords and pianos for the likes of Glenn Gould and La Monte Young, founding venerated music outlet The Kitchen and introducing Canal Street bludgeonings of electric guitar to academic minimal marks. Even if you're feeling Spartan, cutting out all the non-guitar works here (as most of his focus these days lies in brass), you'd still have a huge reckoning with one of the downtown greats looming larger than the Federal Reserve building. Chatham is huge, and that the box grasps so much of that significance makes it a crowning achievement.

-Andy Beta, May 19th, 2003