Shortwave Postcard is the first collaboration from Los Angeles's experimental electronic guitarist G.E. Stinson and solo acoustic guitarist Alex de Grassi. On this album, the duo's impressive technique is transmogrified through improvisation and extemporaneous manipulation of frequencies.

Stinson co-founded Shadowfax and eventually migrated to Los Angeles to work with Nels and Alex Cline, Gregg Bendian, Jeff Gauthier and more. Like Stinson, the American folk and blues scene inspired de Grassi. He came to lead Andean jazz group Tatamonk.

Stinson's L.A. studio was the setting for the unrehearsed two days of recording that compared and documented the meeting of two extensive vocabularies in separate languages talking, as it were, on the same topic. Instead of relying on technology, the pair employed unexpected tunings, differing implements, bizarre fingerings and a spectrum of guitars to create an otherworldly and expansive note from beyond.

[ by Tom Schulte ]
Rambles: 2 November 2002