The Album Club: "Singularity" by Joe Morris

[Trollheart]

Occulthawk's pick for round eight. You know what to do.

[Trollheart]

Any sort of familiarity with this album/artist, or are both entirely new to you? None
Expectations (if any): Dunno
Initial impression: Noodling, so much noodling!
Favourite track(s): Pretty much none of them.
Least favourite track(s): All of them
Overall impression: Very boring
Chances of listening to further material from this artist? Zero
Rating (not mandatory): 4/10 (Note: in case anyone blows up on me, my ratings are personal and pertain ONLY to how much I enjoyed, or did not enjoy the album. They may be taken to often have no relation to or reflection on the album as it is perceived outside of my narrow musical worldview, so keep your pants on)
Comments: Before anyone jumps down my throat (and you will), I'm sure that fans of jazz, inatrumental guitar and guitarists themselves will love this. I'm none of those things, and I don't love it. To be honest, it bored the arse off me. I'm sure it's all very clever and technical and wonderful, but to me it sounds like some guy messing around and having fun on his guitar. Sure, that's great if you're into that but I'm not. We were four tracks in before I even realised, and as the album went on it was clear it wasn't going to get any better for me. I wouldn't say I hated it as such, but I disliked it very much.

[Anteater]

Hah. The funny thing about this album is I'm pretty sure I could have recorded something similar to it before a typical day back in 7th grade band practice...when I was haphazardly warming up and strumming chord progressions at random and stringing them together with no idea what I wanted to play. I've seen some master improvisers at work and this guy is just ****ing around. Wish Bandcamp had been around back then: maybe I could have made some cash with those idle hands. Speaking of which, I saw some reviews of it on the album's actual Bandcamp page: brilliant comedy.

5 out of 10

[OccultHawk]

The tone and technique on this recording are amazing. Brilliantly focused and startlingly dexterous. Dude’s an absolute powerhouse.

Listed in Wire’s 50 best of 2001 (Wire magazine is the by far the best print music publication going in case you don’t know now you do)’

[YorkeDaddy]

Originally Posted by Anteater

Hah. The funny thing about this album is I'm pretty sure I could have recorded something similar it before a typical day back in 7th grade band practice...when I was haphazardly warming up and strumming chord progressions at random and stringing them together with no idea what I wanted to play. I've seen some master improvisers at work and this guy is just ****ing around. Wish Bandcamp had been around back then: maybe I could have made some cash with those idle hands. Speaking of which, I saw some reviews of it on the album's actual Bandcamp page: brilliant comedy.

5 out of 10

I'd be incredibly shocked and impressed if you were this skilled at guitar in 7th grade. The album's not really for me and I'd likely never listen again but the guitar playing on this album is ridiculously high level stuff, I consider myself decent and I'm not even close to being able to replicate this

[MicShazam]

It's not on Spotify and it's not on Youtube?

EDIT: Never mind. Google failed me and I didn't notice that the Joe Morris that Spotify showed first was the wrong guy.
The album is here: https://open.spotify.com/album/0TxeJpCFubWVbYQ0JEjDcr

[Anteater]

I've heard the stuff he's done with other musicians and ensembles. This particular album's acclaim is a bit of a mystery to me for that reason.

[MicShazam]

I don't know much about this particular kind of music, but it seems clear enough that this material is generally not easy to play. Some of the fast and precise finger picking especially seems like something far from every guitarist could pull off with such a sense of flow.

[Psy-Fi]

This one didn't do anything for me as a jazz album or a guitar album. My reaction to it was much the same as Trollheart and Anteater. There were some occasional spots where it sounded like the guitarist had some idea of where he was going but, overall, it gave me the impression that he was just randomly fingering chords and notes and randomly plucking the strings with no rhyme or reason. More of a warm-up exercise than anything. He sounded fast and precise but the music didn't sound cohesive and it just bored me.

3/10

[Neapolitan]

I listened to it from beginning to end. I have to admit I never developed my taste beyond the Bebop Jazz guitar. It's my bread and butter. So this album was like venturing into unknown territory. Is this album suppose to be amazing? or is it just so-so? or is it some guy trying to bring Ornette Coleman to acoustic guitar? ... I don't know. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It was my first time hearing this album. A few tracks down the pike I start to notice that I couldn't distinguish one song from another. The technique was so similar throughout the album. There was not much variety from song to song. It was like all a variation of a theme. When the album was over there wasn't anything noteworthy I could remember about it. I didn't think 'oh wow, track five he's really on fire,' cause track five sounded like the rest of the album. It was like one humongous song arbitrarily broken up into song segments every few minutes. The whole thing was just some guy noodling guitar.

It was OK as I was listening to it. So I'll rate it a "like."