#mark shippy

[spilladabalia]

U.S. Maple - "Stuck"

[ozkar-krapo]

US MAPLE

"Talker"

(LP. Drag City. 1999) [US]

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U.S. Maple -- "Magic Job" intro "Ma, Digital" & Babe" -- Live

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U.S. Maple - Rice Ain't Afraid of Nothing

"I just hope people know that we’re writing songs, that we’re not just up there improvising. That’s not schtick up there. It’s four people communicating." - Al Johnson.

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U.S. Maple - Stuck

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Shorty - Rocketman, Rocketman

[dustedmagazine]

Mark Shippy & Alex Cunningham — Please Advise (Flat Plastic)

Rockers jam, and jazz and free musicians improvise. Embedded within these different characterizations of spontaneous creation are notions concerning the creators’ relationships to formal frameworks. Electric guitarist Mark Shippy and violinist Alex Cunningham embrace it all, finding in the space between formal aesthetics not a chasm to be bridged, but a zone within which to create. Their priorities lie with action, with turning up, jumping in and kicking up a cloud. Please Advise, their second LP, is a diorama of everything that is standing and everything that is knocked over when the dust settles.

Back in the day, Shippy used to play with US Maple. While he’s no longer confined by the need to frame a singer, he retains a very rock-derived commitment to forward momentum. He knows the effectiveness of a big, solid sound, as well as the communicative effectiveness of a climax-oriented arc of events. Cunningham, on the other hand, has worked mainly in freer contexts, having recorded with Damon Smith and Patrick Shiroishi. During the encounters documented on this LP, each musician contributes tune-fragments that you might recall, rhythms that can be felt even when they can’t be counted and alloyed tones that are sound-worlds unto themselves.

Both of them make ample use of amplification to stake their claims on available space, and effects to fill said space with attention-getting activity. Shippy’s amply processed signals range from trebly, blurred notes to melting memories of rockabilly twang to woofer-ripping bursts of synthetic sound. Cunningham uses pedals to shift his instrument’s pitch into the floor-rattling range, giving this record a bass presence you would not expect from a violin-guitar duo. With pedals engaged, his playing swells and hums restlessly, using pitch-shifting to lend ballast and gravity to Shippy’s echo-enshrouded, not-quite-repeating patterns. But he can also flip to the other extreme, offering unprocessed bowing and plucking that dances agilely upon the guitarist’s unstable sound surfaces, and spark flicking formations that wreath Shippy’s more progression-oriented passages like St. Elmo’s fire sparking around a clipper ship’s rigging. Whether jointly hurtling or patiently drifting, leave a wake worth exploring.

Bill Meyer

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US Maple - Letter to ZZ Top

US Maple - Letter to ZZTop

nice oneadd &fmt=18 to the end of the web link for maximum quality