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Elliot Sharp's Terraplane: Forgery

By Eyal Hareuveni

Guitarist Elliot Sharp, one of the most influential and innovative figures on the avant-garde New York downtown scene of the last generation, claims that his blues outfit Terraplane (coined after Robert Johnson's “Terraplane Blues") is actually a pop band that lacks only popularity. He is absolutely right. Forgery--the group's fifth release--is its most direct, compact, emotional and, ultimately, most matured to date.

Sharp's proficiency is so well-versed in the blues vocabulary, inside and out, that one ...

Elliot Sharp & Reinhold Friedl: Feuchitfy

By John Eyles

Recorded in New York in March 2001 as part of Elliott Sharp's 50th birthday celebrations, this is the second release from this duo, after Anostalgia (Grob, 2002). The combination of Reinhold Friedl's piano--prepared or played inside--with Sharp's array of instruments is highly distinctive. The two players are adept at laying down repeated patterns--as close as one could ever get to riffs in freely improvised music--which are frequently complex, but also highly engaging and entertaining. Typically, Friedl lays down the pattern ...