You could say that guitar led experimentalism is having a moment. Away from the revered Frith/ Orcutt/Ambarchi/Anderson/Connors conclave, a new wave of fretboard deconstructors are cranking up their own kind of volume. Jules Reidy, Chuck Roth, Eli Winter, Ava Mendoza and Farida Amadou (doing it four string style) have pushed into muso consciousness with their albums over the last year or so and now Nina Garcia is twirling the discerning spotlight her way.
Not that Garcia has just burst onto the leftfield block. Since 2015 she’s been fully active in the French underground and improv scene in a swathe of bands including Bordeaux’s Le Un. Her s/t debut, released in 2018 under the Mariachi persona, was an uncompromising excavation of guitar-pedal-amp possibilities but 2025 sees Garcia emerging under her own name for a sophomore release. ‘Bye Bye Bird’ comes via the Ideologic Organ imprint with hints of not structure but at least a proposal giving each piece a more defined identity. Yes the improvisational thrills remain but they are set within a purposeful context, a moment, a mood or a memory to share.
‘Bye Bye Bird’s title track follows a resolving narrative arc, from tuned single notes to a peaceful melody which gazes outwards. Those notes then begin to twang and grind, cavernous, industrial, repetitive, a pounding which exhausts itself, leaving one fatigued, ravaged monotone tolling. This startling opening highlights Garcia’s evolving relationship with her instrument and how she’s reconsidered her approach for solo works. Shifting slightly from the stoic minimalism of her Mariachi days, on ‘Bye Bye Bird’ she uses a distortion pedal and most crucially a mobile pick up to hover over the strings.
These shifts seem to have evolved for Garcia not out of ‘techy’ curiosity but in pursuit of extending the dynamic range. Their electrifying impact energises the album in different ways. Pick-up tentative is anything but, it’s forceful, it’s agitated and it let’s you grasp that tension through a scribble of aggressive noise. Close to the sound of a hyperactive search for a radio station, Garcia paints a portrait of extended confusion punctured only by frustrated groans, yanked from the guitar neck. In contrast, on the quirky Ballade des Souffles Garcia plucks at unamplified folksy notes, gobbling up each phrase with a quick twist of the volume switch while for Aube she delicately coaxes miniscule whimpers with her hand held pick up. These shorter tracks seem to be more than interludes on ‘Bye Bye Bird’, they are careful considered moments which reveal another dimension to Garcia’s physical approach to music making.
Still, although these more reflective tunes offer a glimpse of possible future diversions, it’s the visceral, cacophonous pieces which lay at the heart of this album. Dans l’alios drones spookily, Garcia pounding a ceremonial beat while whirring buzzsaw and whining headstock sounds circle. La Leurre comes with a hypnotic looping momentum which highlights the stamina and focus that Garcia combines in her music. Lilting along to a bluesy chock, her Fender G&L chews over its patterns like a vamping harmonica.
Garcia’s music is clearly uninhibited by any notions of how her instrument should be played. She may revel in her guitar’s steely twang and pick up velocity, but uses each part of its mechanism, every option its surface offers to communicate with the listener. Add in adrenalin plus buoyant inventiveness and you get the chiming scale catharsis of Harsh hopping or the metallic gamelan peel of Whistling memories. This closing track reverberates around itself, the soundscape of crumbling belfries warning of some final emergency that fades on a telling feedback flatline.
It’s no surprise from this showing that Thurston Moore reckons Garcia is ‘moving the art of noise guitar into surprising and intriguing new spaces’. ‘Bye Bye Bird’ opens up this sometimes-impenetrable form of musical expression with a range of emotional gestures and enthralling imagery which take you somewhere beyond mere curiosity. What does the ‘wow factor’ mean in the world of experimental music? This album can help you find that answer.
Get your copy of ‘Bye Bye Bird‘ by Nina Garcia from your local record store or direct from Ideologic Organ HERE
