Bill Orcutt

Bill Orcutt is an American guitarist and composer whose work combines elements of blues, punk, and free improvisation.

Radical guitar retreats, reduced to the bare essentials, but with an intensity that hurts – cult guitarist Bill Orcutt is back in Vienna after ages. The co-founder of the post-hardcore band Harry Pussy, which is considered legendary in music circles, also single-handedly declines the musical vocabulary of extremes. Somewhere between American roots, sparse blues and outsider eccentricity, i.e. where illustrious names like John Fahey, Jack Rose and Jandek already cavort, Orcutt plucks, taps, maltreats the 4 strings of his guitar and relies on confrontation and catharsis. His sparse, sketchy improvisation manages to be brute and romantic in equal measure. Unmercifully excessive guitar runs are rasped across the strings bone-dry and at a manic pace, returning to us as melancholic overtone mantras.