Dan Stearns: composition, instruments and sounds

Not Even Love was composed and recorded in Rutland, MA across stretches of 1990 and 1991, and later mastered in 1993 by Pete Zolli and Shawn Briggs for the recording, Opus Contra Naturam. This track features several different microtonal guitars and tuning systems and is something of a long funk/fusion experiment that could be seen as an attempt to marry Miles Davis', Live Evil to Ives' Fourth Symphony and extra stuff too taken from the RIO vangaurd. that was the hoped-for Fusion I was looking for back then.

Opus Contra Naturam was released on cassette and circulated in various incarnations through both the guitar and microtonal underground and was later reviewed in a 1995 article in Guitar Player Magazine—--a rarity for a cassette-only release by an unknown artist---as sounding something like what Charles Ives might've sounded like had he played metal guitar. 

Opus Contra Naturam remains unreleased to this day, but in the nearly twenty-five years since this CD was recorded guitar music has changed a lot in terms of taste and openness to experimentation, and in some ways this music sounds more at home in its own future than it did in the athletic, Varney/GIT (etc) guitar period in which it was recorded.

Not Even Love

Dan Stearns - instruments and composition, with old friends Jim Capone on clarinets and soprano sax, and Scott Dakota on the production, engineering and mix.

"In a World Out of Tune" was composed in 1988 for a guitar contest. I was influenced by a lot of music in this period still, like Ives and The Decoding Society for example, but when I listen to it now I think it more or less was the first thing I did where I'd say maybe I was starting to just try to be myself- which of course just starts a journey that never ends if you want to try to keep moving forward towards any momentum in that type of a direction... the classic "damned if you do, and damned if you don't"!

In any event, the piece did place in the soundpage competition that year for Guitar Player Magazine and was said to sound something like "Carla Bley meets Merciful Fate", or so it was written anyway- and in a magazine I'd read since I was in middle school and my mom could buy at a store.... ha, the big time, my sentence-and-a-half of fame!

One of the great things I remember about this time was working with Scott Dakota, who was a close friend then whom I learned a lot from. My friend and frequent collaborator back then, Jim Capone, as well... as this was some of the last recording we did together before he went into Peace Corps and was suddenly in Swaziland. For me, that time with those people, that's what I remember most now* 

*having 'flashed in the pan' as it were and moved on to the other thing at the end of the rainbow--

Daniel Stearns - "In A World Out of Tune"

a personal homage to one of my favorite guitarists, the great Terje Rypdal, and more than a few nods else wheres as well--to the imagination united, and one of my very best pieces IMO:

Dan Stearns - microtonal electric and acoustic guitars, bass, keys, analog, percussion, mandolin,  electronics, sounds, toys, mixing, composition
Bryan Stearns - drums
Jacob Barton - bassoon and uderbot
Jim Capone - clarinets
3-Hand Man - turntables and loops, etc.

Sigmata - One Fine Summer Day

Daniel Stearns

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