#billygomberg

There’s a fascinating mix of distance and closeness in Billy Gomberg’s music. His pieces involve multiple layers between original sound and final effect, which gives them an underwater aura, more like extended ripples than direct hits. Yet each one of the eight beguiling tunes on Slight At That Contact has parts that are clear and present enough that you could practically reach out and touch them. It’s cliche to talk about music as a weaving of textures, but it’s also hard not to think of Gomberg’s work that way. He structures tracks by shifting degrees of blur and clarity like notes arranged on a musical staff.

There’s also something physically present about the arcs in the music on Slight At That Contact. You can practically feel them progressing, unfolding, coalescing. The movement is thoroughly patient and considered, yet it connects on a gut level. It’s music that stirs more than it impresses, rings a tuning fork in your core rather than a neural path in your brain. Of course, Slight At That Conact works on an intellectual plane too, and I’d be happy to think about it for days on end. But mostly I like the way it moves me.

– Marc Masters

BILLY GOMBERG on Slight At That Contact

Every couple weeks or months, I open up old guitar tablature files and play along with albums like Head On The Door.  My recordings are an outgrowth and refinement of material encountered in practice, and that practice started playing along to “Close To Me” or Tubeway Army’s “Jo The Waiter.”

Slight At That Contact was mostly recorded and assembled in 2014. Anne & I recorded Extinguishment around the same time, and I’m really proud of that album too. I’m always trying to do the same thing, to use this music to relate to a listener in the way I relate to the music, using instruments and techniques that are meaningful or enjoyable to me. I don’t push too hard, I do what works, I keep what works best. There is nothing programmatic, strictly narrative or biographical going on. Music makes an opening for listening, interpretation, meaning, kinds of interior poetry.

The title is a misheard lyric from Life Without Buildings which I listened to a lot when running. The phrase makes sense to me, reflecting on the music, and how I think of it in my relationship to listening and listeners. My headphones broke and the replacement pair broke too, so now I just listen to the park.