Nick Didkovsky's "Now I Do This" and "Screaming Into the Yawning Vacuum of Victory"

There are certain guitarists I always look to when it's original ideas and fresh approaches I'm craving. Nick Didkovsky is one such axe-slinger. Since I first encountered him via his $100 Guitar Project, I've been amazed and enthralled by the prog rock extremity of his work with Doctor Nerve, his evocations of the hard rock I grew up with via Pretties for You NYC (his homage to the first, undervalued Alice Cooper LP) and his Tony Iommi guitar lessons on YouTube, the father-son death metal of Vomit Fist, and the crushingly heavy textures of free metal duo CHORD. On his two latest releases, available on CD via his Punos Music label or digitally via Bandcamp, Didkovsky looks both backward (to his first solo record, originally released on vinyl in 1982) and forward (through duets with his former Fred Frith Guitar Quartet bandmate Mark Howell, recorded in a couple of quick sessions back in September).

Now I Do This had its genesis in Didkovsky's student days, when he found the compositional freedom he sought in electronic music. Here Didkovsky, noted for his six-string prowess, employs the full array of implements available to the late 20th century composer: prepared guitar, tape-manipulated voices and found sounds, synths, percussion, and homemade instruments like the awesomely abrasive nail violin. (Listening, I am reminded of the experimental musician who told me, "Anything is an instrument if you stick a contact mic on it.") With these tools, Didkovsky produced atmospheric soundscapes that engage the ear and evoke unlikely emotion. 

The epic, 15-minute "Silesian Winter" is the album's tour de force, wending its way through shifting moods and textures. The four bonus tracks, all unearthed on ancient cassettes and previously unheard, range from an early version of album opener "Flykiller" (sort of an atonal "Peter Gunn" variant) to "Mokele Mbembe," in which wind and strings as well as percussion perform rhythmic functions. In this context, the tonality of "Chanedra," the earliest piece here (1980), is almost shocking, starting out like a ruminative King Crimson outtake before venturing into turbulent territory Doctor Nerve would explore more fully a couple of years hence.

Around the time Didkovsky was creating Now I Do This, Mississippi-born Mark Howell was arriving in New York, where he formed avant-rock band Better Than Death with bass clarinetist Michael Lytle (also a Didkovsky collaborator in Doctor Nerve). Howell went on to co-lead the bands Zero Pop and Timber, and to play alongside Didkovsky in the original lineup of the Fred Frith Guitar Quartet (one section of whose "The As Usual Dance Towards the Other Flight to What is Not" is reprised here) before embarking on an academic career. The two men reconvened when Howell visited NYC this past September, bringing a sheaf of compositional ideas, a couple of Les Pauls, Marshalls, and 1x12 cabs (but no effects) into Didkovsky's studio for two whirlwind afternoon sessions.

The result, Screaming Into the Yawning Vacuum of Victory, is a collection of 21 miniatures (the two longest pieces are under two minutes, the shortest 21 seconds) that recall Trout Mask Replica in their knotty contrapuntal complexity. On "Twitch Code," f'rinstance, the twin guitars negotiate a steeplechase of choppy chords and staccato lines. On the two opening tracks, Didkovsky and Howell vocalize in unison; the lyrics to "Fat Dad, Fat Son" are particularly resonant as the record drops in a week when the trials of Rittenhouse, and Ahmaud Arbery's killers, are winding up. 

As one might expect from an electronic composer, Didkovsky views mixing and sequencing as crucial components in the record making process. His attention to the flow of events conjoins these units of experience in mini-suites; the one that includes "Automagically," "Luscious," and the aforementioned "The As Usual Dance..." is a particular favorite at mi casa. The closing "Heat," with its droning, pulsing streams of feedback, just skirts the domain that the ongoing CHORD project inhabits. I'll be using this CD to warm the house this winter.