Bill Orcutt’s Music For Four Guitars is a bit like a favorite dish. It tasted great the first time, delicious the second, and by the third, you’re starting to realize that it’s endlessly renewable. HausLive 4, an audience recording that was taped at Chicago’s Constellation venue and released on cassette by a local label, is that illuminating third edition. Whether the guitar nerd in your life throws down with a boombox in the backyard or a Bluetooth speaker in the shower, it’s the summer party soundtrack that they might not have known that they needed. But they do.
First, some history. Orcutt arrived at the original album after several years spent trying to answer a friend’s dare to compose a guitar quartet. He eventually reached a concept: Develop a sequence of brief, minimalist structures and realize them using the rich, brittle language of Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band. Sitting at home in front of his computer, Orcutt started each piece with one track, then built it up with recorded improvisations, which he then pared back so that there were always four interlocking electric-guitar parts. Before he released the original album in 2022, he recruited fellow guitarist Shane Parish to transcribe the piece. Parish then helped Orcutt put together a band that included Wendy Eisenberg and Ava Mendoza, and they toured the piece around the U.S. and Europe in 2023 and 2024. First, a live double LP captured the music after the quartet had gotten sufficiently accustomed to start switching things up; now, the cassette under consideration checks in on how the music’s ripened after another year.
Formally, HausLive 4 is not that different from Four Guitars Live. The sequence is the same, right down to the open spots where Orcutt introduces the quartet and its members take solos. The differences are in the details. The remarkably vivid recording by local music head Joel Berk (who performs under the name ragenap) achieves a tonal saturation that nicely complements the more roomy ambience of its predecessor. The quartet’s attack is more keyed up; while the tunes might vary only a couple seconds from the earlier editions, their feel is more springy and urgent. And those empty spots attest to the degree to which the whole band’s membership has chosen to inhabit Orcutt’s world. Parish, Eisenberg and Mendoza share manifold chops and versatility, and each of them cuts loose in highly individual fashion at some point. But no matter how far their embellishments wander, they ultimately resolve in a way that highlights or amplifies some aspect of the original music. This stuff is gloriously alive and still growing. [Hausu Mountain]
—Bill Meyer
