Lazybird (The International Bar),
Dublin, 12 March 2006

This gig served as an album launch for the Dublin Guitar Quartet’s debut album Deleted Pieces, which had just been released a couple of days beforehand on Greyslate Records, and attendance-wise it was quite successful, with over fifty paying punters.

This gig also marked the DGQ’s second as an all-electric outfit. Up until a show in the Sugar Club a few weeks earlier, they had always relied on classical guitars – even the album itself was recorded solely acoustically – so one wonders if this switch might not prove controversial in some circles.

Unsurprisingly, they played several songs from the new album, the most memorable of which was their version of the second movement of Henryk Gorecki’s Quasi una Fantasia; on the album, it’s all-acoustic, but the live version was even more aggressive, with the electric guitars providing the insistent rhythm. However, the other Deleted Pieces performances didn’t work quite as well; some of them didn’t quite fully survive the acoustic-to-electric transition, and seemed to be lacking a certain something.

But it was the non-album choices that proved most popular. Showing that the Quartet still hasn’t gotten over its fondness for Philip Glass, they played several short pieces by him early on, which the audience predictably reacted to enthusiastically (Glass’ bland and unchallenging work is audience-pleasing almost to the point of pandering, in this reviewer’s opinion). However, this reviewer felt that the sharper electric guitar sound didn’t suit these pieces nearly as well as the softer tones of classical guitars would have, and they suffered as a result.

On the other hand, they finished with a superb arrangement of Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint (a tip of the hat to the RTÉ Living Music Festival of a few weeks earlier, perhaps) which couldn’t have been performed in their previous all-acoustic format. Even though the piece originally called for a single electric guitarist to play against several pre-recorded versions of him/herself, adapting it for more guitars can work quite well too, as the Quartet showed: this performance drew the best reaction of the night. If they can continue working more electric-friendly pieces into their repertoire, they can only improve. With luck, we’ll soon be seeing them perform Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca, two composers who have written extensively (and brilliantly) for all-electric ensembles.

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