The Night Has Many Hours

“The Night Has Many Hours” completes the trilogy New York-based guitar-wizard/composer Kleier began with “KlangenBang” and “Deep Night, Deep Autumn”. For this episode he is joined by Annie Gosfield and Joan Jeanrenaud. He writes: “I have always enjoyed the works of fiction writers who have main characters that reappear in sequential novels, especially noir masters like Raymond Chandler, Walter Moseley, and William Gibson.

For these three CDs, I have thought of my own guitar playing and the sound world it occupies as a “character” who shows up repeatedly in a myriad of musical situations, with each variation somehow related to the last one.” “For the first part of the trilogy, “KlangenBang”, my musical character dealt with concert performance, improvisation, and song form. In “Deep Night...” this character explored a dark world of electronic manipulations and sinister development.

For this final episode, the guitar player character investigates the concept of variations in ambience. These ambiences might include those found in urban chaos, cold and icy winters, deserted alleyways, dark subway tunnels, rolling California hillsides, or even an occasional quiet pool of beauty...”

Roger Kleier is a composer, guitarist, and improviser who began playing electric guitar at age thirteen after discovering Captain Beefheart and Jimi Hendrix on the radio airwaves of Los Angeles. He studied composition at North Texas State University and the University of Southern California, and has developed a unique style that draws equally from improvisation, contemporary classical music, and the American guitar traditions of blues, jazz, and rock. Much of his compositional work involves the development of a broader vocabulary for the electric guitar through the use of extended techniques and digital sound manipulation.

Roger has collaborated with Annie Gosfield, Carl Stone, Marc Ribot, Elliott Sharp, Fred Frith, Chris Cutler, Joan Jeanrenaud, David Moss, Davey Williams, Phill Niblock, John Zorn, Ikue Mori, David Krakauer, Stan Ridgway, and many others. He has recently formed a quartet called “El Pocho Loco”, which is dedicated to guitar instrumentals that features keyboard ist Annie Gosfield, bassist Trevor Dunn, and drummer Ches Smith.