Fields/Lependorf - Everything is in the instructions

Grego Edwards, Gapplegate Guitar Blog

Shakuhachi flute music combined with a new music-avant jazz sensibility? Yes, that's pretty much what Everything is in the Instructions (Ayler 135) is all about. Scott Fields is on what sounds like a semi-amplified hollow body electric guitar; Jeffrey Lependorf is on shakuhachi.

There is a fine-line between the pre-composed and the improvised on most of this album. They flow together seamlessly. Five have Scott Field's compositional frameworks; two are framed by Jeffrey Lependorf; and there is a version of Trane's "Naima".

Scott's guitar work has real originality to it. He may play with straight tuning, or alter it via a prepared guitar with objects placed between and onto the strings, but in any case what he plays has outside flow that acts like a musical fingerprint--it is his very own playing going on. Jeffrey channels traditional Japanese shakuhachi style (no mean feat) into a pretty brilliant amalgam of sound tradition and modern phraseology-harmonic expansion.

The music requires concentrated listening, then pays off with a new sort of contemplative outness.

There is nothing quite like it out there. You really should hear it!