Originally released as a cassette in an edition of 100 for east coast gigs in MarchRecorded by Dustin BurrowsMastered by Jake MeginskyAll music by Full Size

Originally released as a cassette on Open Mouth OM81All sounds Dan Greenwood/Bill Nace

Out in the world, in conversation, Samara Lubelski and Bill Nace are always listening. Samara is steadily attentive, she teases out, she leans forward, tunes in, one ear simultaneously alert to the record playing in the background, or the strange sound the dryer is making. Bill, a natural riffer, is wilder: his attention scatters, he gathers sensory information and loops back to deliver a newly synthesized slice of environment.These ways of being show up in their individual work. As a duo the natural push and pull--the hearing and response--deepens and twists until it's difficult to tell where one instrument ends and the other begins. Samara, on violin, unfurls infinite seismometer-esque threads of sound; Bill goes wider, wraps around, envelops and expands.Improvisation, generally speaking, can become a quest for dominance: A wrestling match, or worse, a shouting match. While technically improvised, Bill and Samara seem to be doing something else. They share a language, developed over many years of playing together. As Samara puts it, “having a shared vision that you're able to try and get [to] is way more exciting than actual improv.”One might hear 43/80 as a sequel or sibling or mirror to the duo’s previous studio recording, a self-titled release from 2018. Each record creates an environ for the listener, but where S/T lulls and haunts, the drone of 43/80 swarms. It’s heavier and closer (side one is, anyway), it’s rock ‘n’ roll performed by hypnotists. Bill plays a hollow two-stringed taishogoto, a bassier, more resonant instrument than the solid-bodied, more high-pitched taisho he’s been touring and recording with in recent years.With Bill switching to electric guitar, side two is the more obvious heir to S/T, spacious, rife with gorgeous, crystalline tone, propelled forward by a gentle tension. Samara notes that Bill tosses her curveballs, which she doesn't mind swinging for. “Whatever Bill brings I’m down for it.” Bill says he doesn't really play with anyone like he does with Samara. “There’s a generosity there,” a willingness to meet the other half way. Listening in action opens up possibilities. “I don’t feel like the parameters are firm,” Samara continues. “They’re very open.”---Margaret Welsh NYC 2024  --- Samara Lubelski--ViolinBill Nace---2 String Taishogoto, Electric Guitar Recorded at Machines with Magnets by Seth ManchesterMastered by Chuck JohnsonFront Cover Photo Barry DeanText and Layout Bill NaceBack Cover art Spencer Herbst Split release between Open Mouth Records and Three Lobed Records

Obstacle #79: MEMORY IS CURRENT offers a sequence of works for player piano, a device which captured Rick Myers’ imagination in 2017. Divining a method from mathematical measurements and intuitive drawing systems, Myers obstructed piano rolls using adhesive tape. Performed in this altered state on a player piano in the hallway of Easthampton Machine and Tool in Easthampton, Massachusetts, the music embedded in the rolls was extricated from its history and given fresh life. Restriction forged a pathway to expanse. Here are the enchanting results.The workings of the machine are evident throughout, wistfully recalling music box fantasias, even as the tumbling notes confound expectations. The meticulously constructed scenarios invariably run amok, and in between chaos and melody, frustration and freedom, an impossible helix fashions its own celestial music. The sounds grumble against one another, summoning subterranean promises and unearthing unexpected delights.As the tracks run into one another, Myers interposes spoken dispatches, detailing aspects of the story behind the record. Like the sounds of the piano, they transcend mere reportage. Increasingly obscured over the course of the two sides, these ghostly interjections are part of the sonic fabric, enhancing both the narrative and acousmatic aspects of the project.Rick Myers is an artist whose decades-long career has studiously disregarded the confines of medium – there are books, drawings, sculptures, installations, exhibitions, videos, performances, design projects, texts, and combinations thereof. Sound, as evidenced by his recent focus on recorded material, is but another potent arrow in his quiver. Plus, it’s nothing new – he cut his teeth as a DJ.This record is an interior travelogue shot through with ecstatic truth. In furthering the process of obstruction by which the player piano makes its music possible, Myers is, in his own words, looking to “cast and dislodge time.” Like God or Loss or Love, Time is one of the bedeviling bottomless wells from which the most affecting art springs. This is the real thing.Rick Myers is not in search of lost time, he is attempting to lose it, and in so doing to chart the inevitable trajectory of that loss, of its apparent disappearance, its peculiar habit of hiding in plain sight.

"We have all been there at some point or another, maybe even last night. There are those moments when you are drifting into or out of sleep when it is hard to identify exactly what is real and what is imaginary. Time spent working through the hazy gauze separating waking and dreaming blurs the edges of perception and leaves us sorting through myriad versions of hyper-reality. The music of Body/Head has always existed for me within this liminal space. Whether it is Kim Gordon’s spectral, invocation-like vocals and churning guitar work or Bill Nace’s reality altering guitar conjurings, the duo have spent over a decade creating a singular body of work that rides that very knife’s edge. Are their sonic constructions here to help you or to harm you? To guide you to safety or to lead you into ruin? Where the listener sits mentally at any given moment helps determines the outcome along countless dualities. This mastery over unpredictability is why I have constantly considered them the most potent band going.While time the past few years has been strange in all walks of day-to-day reality, Body/Head continues forwards as a force as constant as the tides. They offer forth the Come On EP now as a sort of proof of life photo, a transmission to remind you that they are still out here and ready to serve on a moment’s notice. Its four tracks have been assembled from a combination of old and new parts to create a composite whole that is every bit as vital as any other chapter within their discography. Equal parts raw and shine, current statement and hint of future releases to come, Come On is Body/Head operating on all cylinders. The concept was to create a statement along the lines of classic 2x7” EPs like Chain Gang’s Deuce Package or Dynasty’s Gate and to that end Come On delivers in full." --- Kim Gordon--Vocals, Electric Guitar, SynthBill Nace----Electric Guitar, Piano, EchoplexEngineered by Seth Manchester and Vice CoolerAdditional home recording by Kim GordonMixed and Produced by Bill Nace and Seth ManchesterOM78/TLR147(Released as a Double 7inchSplit release between Open Mouth Records and Three Lobed Records)

"At last! The long-promised duo LP by two undisputed masters of post-tongue instrumental gesticulation and invention. Augured by their eponymous 7” from 2019, Off Motion is a full-length exploration of the previously unknown aural destinations these two guys continually discover as they move beyond the borders of music-as-it-is-played. Often, when writing about music, it's possible to draw comparisons to players' stylistic relationships to what has gone before. But the music on Off Motion (to quote a William Burroughs chestnut), “buggers comparison.” Nace's style on electric guitar may have its roots somewhere in the playing of Keith Rowe, but the sonic scapes he conjures are so nimbly freaked, I can rarely figure out what the hell he is doing (if anything) to generate what I'm hearing. And White's avant garde approach to the jaw harp (as well, I think, nose flute and maybe even bird call) has so few precedents apart from random Fluxus events, it's impossible to make any inferences as to possible influences. This duo lives up to the promise of ESP-Disk's motto as much as anyone I can think of. You have never heard such sounds in your life. The seven pieces on Off Motion are hard to unravel. Chik sent recordings to Bill. Nace added his own bits. Then he and Emily Robb screwed around with everything until it pulsed with sheer mystery. I took a lot of notes on the tracks, but the best ones are hard for even me to decode. For “Pathways” -- starts with pixie twinkle guitar, then evolves into a duet for Taishōgoto and nose flute that sounds as though it was designed to drive dogs nuts while they search for phantom, mocking squirrels. For “Erasing” -- like a troubled pigeon visiting a guy who uses an electric razor while bouncing around on Slinky-shoes, before switching into carillon-based boots and breaking into a human pinball routine he's been practicing since he was a boy. I repeat these descriptions only to show how entirely Bill & Chik's music resists easy categorization. There is a sense at times the studio/mixing board itself is being used as an instrument, which is very cool. But I am still jonesing to see these guys do some live shows. Both Bill and Chik have the ability to mix jocularity and seriousness into a strangely compelling whole. Their music is bizarre as hell without being off-putting or sterile, and anyone who has a taste for weird thrills is gonna love Off Motion to death. Tell Alice Cooper the news." -- Byron Coley

Daniel Carter / clarinetSamara Lubelski / violinBill Nace / electric guitar ---Recorded by Robert Mizaki at the Glove in Brooklyn NY on 12/6/2017Cover art by Samara LubelskiCovers screened by Alan Sherry

Two tracks from the No, The Sun sessionsRecorded at Paranoise Studio Hadley, MA by Jim MatusCover art Paul FlahertyCenter label art and text Bill NaceLayout by Stephanie Sutkowski --- Paul Flaherty / alto saxBill Nace / electric guitar

"The first time I heard Wheatie’s music was at a basement show in Philadelphia, and I was entranced. I’ve felt similarly when watching videos of the French singer Barbara as she concentrates on a corner of the room, her eyes big warm coins, singing “La solitude” about a loneliness that “rolls around the hips” and demands that the door is opened. It’s Barbara’s self-possession that haunts me, her willingness to do publicly what I can only find alone. It’s not so much sound but a spirit that Barbara and Wheatie share: Both make music that is as gorgeous as it’s eerie and says a good deal about the workings of their own minds—and by that, I don’t mean that they reveal their psychology—but they take us deep into their peculiarities as musicians.After Wheatie’s set, I asked where I could get a record, and assumed there must be one—surely, I’m late here—because I wasn’t alone. Everyone at that show was visibly mesmerized. It’s been a few years since then, but I haven’t forgotten it, couldn’t, and have waited for Wheatie’s debut, Old Glow, which captures and renews the hypnotic mystery of her set that night. For Old Glow, Wheatie has collaborated with Stephen Santillan, who plays keyboard and guitar, while she’s on the keyboard and dulcimer, and of course, her distinct vocals.Wheatie and Santillan’s album includes “Blue,” which feels like a lyrical invocation that I can imagine under a canticle’s heightened rubric, requiring the congregation to stand as it’s being sung. This song also establishes the harmonium dream-weaving, and a natural pull toward minor scales, which will take us through most of the album—a sound that can be gloomy, but Wheatie’s voice is a luminescent top coat. It comes to us from a long time ago, a voice used for medieval incantations, traditional ballads, and ancient and supernatural myths about solitude, played through the drainpipe.Old Glow contains a private, condensed language that can only be built by solitude and a willingness to forego readymade forms. The problem with language is that, in order to speak, write lyrics, write about them, you must translate the peculiarity of the self into material script. When the heart is inarticulate. When literary language is often too precise. We’re too trained up in it. There is a version of this kind of music that goes the route of slick pop, or becomes lazy because it's beautiful, but Wheatie’s music is distinguished by an elemental weirdness, a plaintive and wonky carnival way off in the distance—this is what it sounds like to submit the self to itself. On the track “Low,” she ululates, “It’s OK to be low. It’s OK to be low.” And because Wheatie has an uncanny ability to make something strange out of the familiar, it feels like a singular utterance. I have not heard it before. As if an old well could talk.There are also several moments of spontaneity in Old Glow. “Canyon” brings more rock, and the harmonium gets country in “Rose.” These turns make the album feel complex, like an epic about connection, loss, the inevitability of our being alone. Nico’s nightmarish Desertshore also moves along a similar queasy spiral—its emotional locus is precise, even though the music is impenetrable. Death and despair in Desertshore, like solitude in Old Glow, is palpable. They can’t help but continuously return to it.One of this album’s many strengths, to my mind, is its willingness to find a language, a mode, and not interfere with it too much. These songs are built by slow accretion. They’re purposeful. I think of a ceaseless fabric, reminiscent of Wilburn Burchette’s Psychic Meditation Music—listening to this music can render you gummy, stir you into putty, spackle you in the cracks. It would be a mistake to believe that it is simple because it seems as if it could go on forever."--- Chelsea Hogue Ohlman IL 2022

Solo Guitar 2 was recorded by Bill Nace in 2008, in a good-sounding room in Bennington, Vermont.  This year the record, originally released as a now (nearly) extinct cassette, is reissued without it’s mysterious and (maybe?) long-lost sibling Solo Guitar 1 (Like any good punk demo -- which, both aesthetically and energetically, Solo Guitar 2 is -- the thrill of discovery is made only sweeter by the potential of future discovery).  The vinyl release comes a little less than a year after Bill’s first “official” solo record, BOTH, which was released by Drag City in May, 2020. The two records don’t necessarily stand in opposition, but they are at different points on the spectrum of production, tone, mood, time, place, age, career. Where BOTH is softened by the warmth and precision of a studio, there’s a wildness to Solo Guitar 2 which approaches the experience of witnessing Bill perform live.  Made up of mostly brief pieces -- songs, practically -- Solo Guitar 2 winds tight, then unwinds, or sometimes snaps apart. Crackling, itchy static morphs into heavy, watery vibration, layered on metallic rattle. There are moments where that Bennington room sounds as sterile and lonely as a deserted art gallery. And then it becomes spacious and warm, like a cathedral filling with the hum of the universe.  The bulk of Bill’s releases are collaborations with other artists, who are drawn to him (at least in part) because he’s an innovative player and a deep listener. Those qualities hold, and in certain ways intensify when he’s on his own. As he takes a series of unlikely tools across his prone guitar with the grace and urgency of someone at a loom or an aircraft control panel, there’s a sense of reaching inward. But where some might meander or navel-gaze, Bill’s playing is a process of constant dynamic construction. What unfurls can feel intensely personal, and often -- for reasons I don’t always understand -- very moving. Bill isn’t interested in micromanaging his listeners’ experiences, but he does make room for us.  Composer Pauline Oliveros observed that when we listen deeply to the world around us, we sometimes notice very subtle and quiet differences in sounds that we thought were familiar. As a result, she writes, “the slightest difference may lead you to a new creative relationship.”  Bill is, I think, tuned in to these subtle and quiet differences. But, in a truly punk fashion, he flips this for the listener, making unfamiliar and not-very-subtle noise into something akin to (but also distinct from) familiar sounds: traffic outside your window, the soft roar of a conch shell to your ear, static between radio stations.Solo Guitar 2, full as it is of shades and moods and life, offers a fresh way of hearing.  Margaret Welsh Philadelphia, PA 2021

Bill Nace and Graham Lambkin first played together in Fall 2018, in Kentucky, behind plastic. In that performance, they sometimes played the same instrument at the same time. Time passed, then they recorded this album in Fall 2019, in London. I was told that an acoustic guitar, a cymbal and tapes were used in the recording and I have no reason to doubt that. There are also voices, birds, a room, the outside world...; a bow is used. Bill & Graham both deal in different kinds of tension & discomfort and while this album is both like & unlike what I've heard from either of them, it is somewhat remarkably laid-back. Though there are separate and distinct tracks, they flow into each other organically. Not without some jagged interruptions - in fact, many of the tracks *announce* themselves with a sudden cough, squeak or scrape - but the field recording aspects (passing cars, a siren, some banter) act as a leitmotif holding things together, adding a casual ambiance that *almost* invites a casual listen. But it is deceptive in that way. It is not a hermetic recording. As much as it doesn't exclude the sounds of the outside world, it also lies open to interpretation. Themes recur just enough to create a connective tissue that frames some of the more seemingly disparate elements. Brief fragments of conversation invite the mind to try to understand and create its own narrative; a pizzicato, modal folksong played on guitar, then played back on tape at the end of Side A has a reprise midway through Side B; hints of ancient music are bowed or chanted... This is not a tapestry without thread, but you've also got to bring some of your own." -- Greg Kelley Somerville MA 2020 --- Recorded / Mixed at LHSH London, England 2019 Photo by Folding Image Profile Ltd Layout by Rosali Middleman & Bill Nace 2020 OM67

Number 7 in Nace's 'Live at' series features one of the legends of the Japanese underground Tamio Shiraishi on saxophone, and Brooklyn-based composer, and sound artist Leila Bordreuil on cello.  --- Leila Bordreuil / cello Bill Nace / guitar Tamio Shiraishi / alto sax --- Recorded by Kevin Reilly at Pageant: Soloveev, Philadelphia, August 2019. Mixed and mastered by Mark Alan Miller.

The sound of the violin is a product of tension and release; the hair of the bow pulls back the violin’s string over and over again and, when the tension gets too great, it releases. The resulting vibration disturbs the air around it which travels in waves, exciting our ear drums and becoming sound. This confrontation of energy with air—the alternation of potential and kinetic energy—occurs over and over again in microcosm: catching, holding, tensing, and releasing. As listeners, however, we only perceive glorious sound. If there’s an efficient way of summing up Samara Lubelski, it’s these two words: glorious and sound. But, in a deeper sense, her music also amplifies the micro-process of the sounding process of the violin: the specific joys of tension, release, and every possible gradation between the two. The tension contained in each sound on Partial Infinite Sequence is not disturbing or stressed. That kind of sound is satisfying but too easy. Instead, it feels like that split second after you trip on the sidewalk. Your body could go in any direction, and every outcome is possible. Your pulse quickens. If you were able to freeze that moment in time and live in it the elation of the unknown would be overwhelming. Samara makes that split-second feeling exist for two sides of an LP. And yet, this music also brings comfort. The tense feeling of elation lives distinctly side-by-side with a knowledge that this music is correct and fits that gap in your world that has been carved out exactly for it. It’s satisfying. It’s the feeling after you trip, the moment that you realize you’re safe, and that you found some grace in stumbling. There are few recordings that have struck me as having this particular quality of having this level of profound tension, stasis, and release mixed, but not diluted by linear cause and effect. Ellen Fullman’s The Long String Instrument is one, as is Charles Curtis playing Naldjorlak I. These are special recordings—examples of a sensitive human being coming to a deep understanding of what they want to say with an instrument while exposing that instrument’s essence in sound. It’s a life event to find a record like that, and I’m happy that I’ve found another. Nate Wooley NYC 2020 --- Samara Lubelski - violin --- Bill Nace - cover art Layout - Bill Nace & Rosali Middleman

In the summer of 2018 guitarist Bill Nace and jaw harp player chik white began a long distance collaboration. They put together enough material for a 7", which was released in September 2019 on Bill's Open Mouth Records. Here it is in download format.  --- Bill Nace / acoustic guitar Chik White / vocals, jews harp. --- Cover by Jacy Webster. Recorded, mixed and mastered by Emily Robb

"John Truscinski has made a solo recording called ‘Bridle Path’, and it’s a document of a journey, a singular meditation - a universal landscape soundtrack. Reflections and refractions of sound swim around in their own subtlety. A conversation gets out of its own way, using an unknown language of letting go. A focused void. Drone slabs and microtones bend and waver, slipping beneath the surface of sound. Using a a mini brute and Korg synthesizer, John carved out time to occasionally sit in a room to work on these recordings. Over a span of two years, he visited this room when he felt like he needed to. Tones travelled through effect pedals and out of speakers, filling up the solitary space with shifting waves. A delicate arrangement of equipment allowed john to be still in the room with this music, immersing himself in it’s subtle guidance. The instruments and recording device were always present and ready when the connection felt right. It feels right. Music underneath. As much as Bridle Path is a venture inward, It’s also a balm for troubled world. There is depth to this recording, and to my ears it’s grounding and illuminating. I listened closely to 'Bridle Path' on my own wanderings, and it became the perfect soundtrack as the moving scenery folded into itself. My days were filled with long drives, airport lines, windy highways, and sweeping views. I I sat still, but also moved at a clip, feeling tired and awake as dramatic landscapes changed with every passing view. ‘Bridle Path’ helped me find stillness in all of the movement. I considered the music a gift. John and I once traveled out to the coast of a famous surf spot in Portugal, Praia Dos Supertoubos, and found ourselves in front of some enormous waves - the biggest I had ever seen. The oceans magnifying energy was surreal, and I sat on the beach with my camera, thrilled as John immersed himself in the wondrous ocean. The massive waves swelled, and there was John, brave and symbiotic - floating, rising, falling, and gliding. This music captures my own vision of him out there on the water. Countless performances, recordings, destinations, discussions, luke warm coffee, big hooded coats, foggy windows, gear in an elevator, junky practice spaces. There was momentum of feeling our own way, laughing, and listening. John always listening seriously. King Tubby pointing to his head. The kind of friend when you get to know their various cars over the years, and enjoy spending time in them. One channel of a stereo working. It always felt good. John has a valued ear and acute sensibility for sound, and ‘Bridle Path’ is new evenidece of his depth. There is a passage that has been offered, and I’m pleased to know that it now exists out there in the world. Listen for yourself." - Steve Gunn November 2019

Another sold out number from Nace, this time with Chris Corsano and Susan Alcorn - a fantastic pedal steel player who has collaborated with the likes of Mary Halvorson, Pauline Oliveros, Evan Parker and pianist Sylvie Courvoisier.  --- Susan Alcorn / pedal steel Chris Corsano / drums Bill Nace / guitar --- Recorded September 5. 2018 live at Rotunda Philadelphia, PA.

"This trio of Chris Corsano on drums, Bill Nace on electric guitar and Steve Baczkowski on saxophones was one of the most powerful albums of the drums-guitar-sax statement in 2018. Unfortunately the vinyl is already sold out."  My first listen to these four extraordinary pieces by Chris Corsano, Bill Nace, and Steve Baczkowski was over a very rough ferry crossing from Cairnryan to Belfast. It's hard not to think of the ghosts of impossible crossings, victories, loses, harbors in such rough waters. Why would anyone venture out here? Finding something new or an overdue visit? Ending all of the wars? For me, for my first listen to Mystic Beings instantly cured all motion sickness. It was probably just the very welcome adrenalin shots from their performance, but all the crashing and pitching over the waves became a joy. I was braver from listening in. Sometimes they hovered like a three-headed beacon -- a soaring vision to follow out on the horizon. Sometimes they seemed pulled into action and attack. Detonations and radio calls. Sometimes the spines of their own instruments cried out on the power of their own cores, their bodies having been left elsewhere. They drifted apart like a search party, skies clouded over, a spreading landscape streaked with transparent layers over layers. Or they joined together in quiet and unsparing ceremony, the kind usually reserved passing back through the place by which you've entered. All the while there was no scratching or banging at hard enclosed corners. These three players created a world of open space and flexible membrane, where any violence would only come from an outside imposition. Each of the songs read like movements in a larger work. As an eavesdropper, I added my own abstract, personal story over the whole album. I could repopulate new stories over and over again over this framework. The arc is that strong, and the conversation is that good. And even if just overheard, Mystic Beings generously called me out to where I needed to be. The shallows and the shores are where the worst dangers can find us, and our best chance of survival is sometimes out in the rolling depths. Deafen out the sirens and stay onward in the deep waters. Thank you, Bill and Chris and Steve, for sharing this kind of wild captain's safety with us.' --Meg Baird, Cairnryan and San Francisco, Nov 2018"

First in Open Mouths Solo Guitar Series. Excellent debut solo from Sightings guitarist Mark Morgan.  "The thing is though is that Mark has always had this really great guitar sound, only partly courtesy of all those shitty pedals he insists on using. He's not coming at this from a Pharoah Sanders-worshipping, free jazz-loving, sensibility. Rather, I hear his home town, Detroit. The record is scuzzy, and raw-sounding, punctuated with moments of utter desolation. Moments build, only to collapse again. There are even funky grooves but, of course, they fall apart. It's fucking great. Dude, you should check it out!' - Julie Cafritz, August 2018" "It's probably the best solo ‘noise’ guitar album I've heard since Alan Licht's 2013 masterpiece Four Years Older(IMO, of course). And yet to call this noise guitar feels like a bit of a misrepresentation as it implies (at least technically I suppose it does) a certain underlying haphazardness. That definitely doesn't feel like the base force at work here. While harshness undeniably plays a big part in the proceedings, this is an infinitely listenable record for fans of inventive textures, extreme processing, and dark industrial implications." - Free Jazz Collective --- 1. Jinx Hack - 4:54 2. Gentleman's C - 4:103. Supercomplication - 10:554. Doctor Detroit - 10:125. A Guy Named Reggae - 2:246. Mikki - 4:22