Guitar with the force of nature
Julia Reidy plays two guitars — a 12-string Martin acoustic and a six-string PRS McCarthy electric, giving them each breathtaking sonic dimensions when she performs.
The Berlin-based guitarist/ composer/improviser finds her unique tone and textures through her ongoing exploration with specific guitar tunings.
“I don’t know how I put the sounds together. I guess that changes every time I play,” she notes with a slight laugh.
“A lot of the time I work with a tuning that I might like,” notes Reidy.
“I don’t consider myself a purist in any sense when it comes to this, but that can be a good generative point to start — having a tuning that I like and then programming a synth to be playing those pitches precisely while I am stumbling around on the guitar.”
Reidy’s stumbling around on guitar started when she was growing up in Sydney, Australia, with an interest in pop and rock music. In her teens, she played with a few rock bands.
“I got interested in pursuing music in a more serious way when I was finishing high school and looking into tertiary education,” recalls Reidy.
“I was big into jazz and free jazz for a couple of years. I was really into Bill Frisell when I was at university studying jazz guitar.
“But I also got into modern jazz like Tim Berne and a lot of people that hang out in New York — that kind of sound.”
Reidy says there is a really healthy live music improvisation scene in Sydney.
“I was quite recently involved in that scene,” she says. “I suppose you would say that a lot of it is centred on the NOW now scene — a festival and series that has been running for quite some time,” she adds.
“I was playing in a band called The Splitter Band (Pitch and Splitter Orchestra) — a big nebulous group of musicians who have been playing together for
the past 20 years.”
Reidy has also performed with players Richard Scott, Anthony Pateras, plus Tony Buck (The Necks) and has been in a duo since 2015 with Jon Rose (Fred Frith, Tony Buck, Relative Violin Festival).
She also worked and performed with the late Australian guitar virtuoso/teacher Phil Haughton.
“Phil was a dear friend that I met in high school,” says Reidy.
“He has quite the music reputation among classical guitarists in Australia and passed away
very suddenly. He had a big impact on a lot of people there.” Including Reidy.
Her latest experimental work “The Beholder” is dedicated to him.
She assembled the music during a 2017 artist-in-residency for Sounding Paths, a program for site-specific sound projects on the island of Syros in Greece.
“So no complaints there!” says Reidy, adding she collected field recordings for this project while on the road in Japan, the States and Australia and finished this extended-range guitar project with Haughton in mind.
Reidy says she moved from Sydney to Berlin because of its progressive music scene.
“That was during my studies in Sydney and I was not having the best time trying to understand bebop at the point,” she notes.
“I was being pushed into other directions so I was left with the idea of taking a kind of gap year. I reoriented myself, and I then stayed there.”
Reidy’s music catalogue includes “Spaces Between” (2016) “Double Course (with Jon Rose, 2016) and EP “All Is Ablaze,” (2016) plus critically-acclaimed “Dawning On” (Slip UK -2017) and “Beholder” (Room40/ A Guide to Saints — 2018)
She is always trying her expand her sound. “An obvious way of doing that is using different media,” says Reidy.
“All is Ablaze,” she says, is just “a solo acoustic guitar. I have been trying to understand electronics a bit in the past year or two,” she says.
“Beholder,” she says, is about “trying to contextualize the guitar but it is all an attempt to serve the music.”
Reidy adds she started creating music on her 12-string in 2015 and has been using a computer sound software called Reactor for electronic “patches.”
Reidy’s sound ranges from ethereal to eerie. Unfinished melodies and furious strumming morph into fluid, slightly discordant, 12-string riffs and often suggest the natural elements from calm sparkling waters to furious forest fires and sudden gusts of wind.
In addition to her own projects, Reidy is also part of Spoiler — a four-piece Berlin-based freeimprov band. Spoiler did “The Alternative Soundtrack to the 2nd Bladerunner Film” in April 2018.
“Liz and I share a love for Vangelis and for being sci-fi nerds,” adds Reidy with a laugh. “We were just talking about the fact that “Blade Runner 2” was being made at that time. A couple of my friends were actually working on the soundtrack. That was a stupid idea, to make our own version of it pre-emptively. We released the album the day that the film came out and added our little video to it but really it was just a fun band,” she says.
“I am not really one to say what is strange in my music. I guess probably none of it. I don’t really feel like I make strange music ...
“I guess people’s reaction is different each time,” muses Reidy. “I like to believe audiences think my music is accessible. It is very nice when it feels like that.”