Tim Catlin - Biography
Melbourne, Australia’s Tim Catlin is the latest, and probably the most inventive and facile, of the new generation of prepared guitarists, and that doesn’t mean he’s done his homework on schedule. If you’re not tuned into the prepared guitar, you’re missing out on a heady and vital subset of avant rock. Rock ‘n’ roll had barely reached adolescence before a select few mad geniuses started getting restless. Sure, the electric guitar was the fundamental, Excalibur, the Hammer of Thor, the Sorcerer’s Stone, the freewheeling key to ecstatic immortality (and girls). Yeah, asked the mad geniuses? What else have you got. Keith Rowe asked first, and as far as many are concerned, he asked the loudest. In the mid-1960s, Rowe and UK experimental improv ensemble AMM unleashed a prescient cacophony of sound that influenced Derek Bailey and Pink Floyd. Much of that sound came from Rowe’s prepared guitar, a standard electric ax set flat on a tabletop, its strings peppered with peculiar objects like erasers, bolts, paper clips and springs. The technique transformed the instrument into a font of dark, brooding, droning, alien sound. After Rowe, there was Fred Frith, Hans Reichel, Glenn Branca, the guys in Sonic Youth, Jim O’Rourke, and Christian Fennesz. Tim Catlin’s in good company.
Catlin’s forte is atmosphere, and long, murky, bone chilling drones. Within the confines of his arcane, antipodal laboratory, he utilizes feedback loops, radio waves, electric motors, homemade electronics, string exciters, and microtonal tunings. The resulting elegiac Om manages to be eerie, meditative, and erotic, all at once. Catlin’s aesthetic nestles comfortably at the foot of Alvin Lucier’s minimalist pallet, but his work is somewhere between sine-wave purity and fretboard naturalism. Catlin’s solo debut was Slow Twitch (2003 Dr. Jim’s Records). It hinted at some awe-inspiring aural vistas, and the implementation of an intuitive methodology that was, at the very least, going to add to the vocabulary of the instrument. The world is full of an awful lot of dudes who blithely plink and plunk away at the guitar, so that’s reasonably high praise for someone toiling away on the backside of the planet.
The next full-length project from Catlin was a flat-out success, replete in a self-confident performance idiom that should, if there’s any justice in the far end of the avant-garde tidal pool, garner some international recognition. Radio Ghosts (2007 23five) is aptly named, and as the Spartan instrumentation — prepared guitar, a bowed cymbal, and a radio — takes on a spectral life of its own, the sound floats in lovely, ephemeral reveries. It’s particular impressive that Catlin separates himself from the pack by utilizing acoustic guitars on several tracks; it punctuates his mastery of the craft.
Catlin has also participated in several collaborative efforts, including Glisten (2009 Low Point) with Machinefabriek and Plates and Wires (2007 Crouton) with Milwaukee’s Jon Mueller (Rhys Chatham, Collections of Colonies of Bees, Volcano Choir). The latter release is definitely worth hunting down. Catlin and Mueller form an impeccable duo, in a setting in which all of the instruments are attuned to interact with each other, creating a semi-autonomous, musical avalanche. As with Tim Catlin’s other recordings, this one may be difficult to find (the hand-painted cover by Milwaukee artist Thomas Kovacich should indicate the scarcity of Plates and Wires), but it’s worth the effort.
