marcus wise Archives · Steve Tibbetts

MyECM

I curated a playlist for ECM as part of their venture into the world of streaming (an article from Pitchfork is here). My annotations for the playlist are below, and a more concise version is on ECM’s website here. The playlist is now up at Tidal and Spotify. I curated selections from (mostly) the first 200 releases…

Live Reviews / Radio

Audio files from various radio reviews.

ECM Bio for “The Fall of Us All”

“Most reviews of Steve Tibbetts’s music describe it in the context of what it’s not; what it is, plain and simple, is Tibbettsian.”

Guitar World / The Sensible Sound reviews

“when a new CD from Steve Tibbetts unexpectedly showed up in my mailbox a few weeks ago, I literally shouted for joy, pumped my fists in the air, and ran up the driveway so that I could get it into my CD player just as quickly as possible”

Downbeat Review: A Man About A Horse

“A Man About A Horse embodies Tibbetts’ established strengths – feral electric guitar solos, complex percussion and meticulously detailed production.”

The Fall of Us All

“a trip of another, more explosive and enriching kind, a dynamic study of Eastern modality and universal spiritualism driven by rock & roll ambition” -Rolling Stone

Guitar Player, July 1994

“Veering from ambient dreamscapes to violent, post-industrial rave-ups, from spellbinding acoustic fretwork to apocalyptic electric fret burn, Tibbetts’ first album in five years is an emotional and sonic tour-de-force.”

Downbeat, February 1990

“we hear original sounds produced from the elements of World Music, intelligent sounds that caress the ear and stir the imagination”

Big Map

“Tibbetts’ bold single-string passages pilot twists and turns above slapped and strummed acoustic rhythms, and his quirky detunings and oddball figures provide a cinematic, edge-of-the-seat experience.” -Guitar Player

College Media Journal, February 1987

“the drums pound, the guitar riffs flutter and fly, tapes mess around, the energy flows, and somehow it all falls together”