CW presskit 5 done-fornow -...
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CHRISTOPHER WILLITS PRESS KIT
Transcript of CW presskit 5 done-fornow -...
CHRISTOPHER WILLITS PRESS KIT
Christopher Willits Biography
Christopher Willits creates patterns of vibrations with sound and light. He occupies a unique corner of the electronic-art-music universe—hovering above the intersection of electronic productionʼs nuts and bolts, new media art, and a wide-open creative mind. “i am a conduit of the process, a kind of gardener,” he says. “I simply imagine, intuit, respond and do the work laid before me.” Willitsʼ tireless responding and doing and working has produced 20 albums in 10 years—solo and in collaboration with artists including Ryuichi Sakamoto, Matmos, Zach Hill, and Taylor Deupree—and an organic, multi-faceted sound that expands like the vines of an electro-acoustic kudzu plant. Christopher Willits is a teacher, a label owner (the experimental hub Overlap.org), a meditator, a tech geek, a visual/new media artist, and virtuosic musician in one. In other words, thereʼs no one out there quite like him.
Willits designs much of his own software, and his music is a holistic universe in which all elements are interconnected; he folds his guitar lines into bleary, unrecognizable shapes and polyrhythmic textures, adding strokes of percussion, horns, and his own voice until the whole glows with an earthly inner light. A full list of Christopher Willitsʼ releases and accomplishments would take up considerable column space, but a beginnerʼs guide to Willits includes 2002ʼs “Folding, and the Tea” (his watery 12k label debut), 2006ʼs landmark “Surf Boundaries” (his first full-length record on Ghostly International), 2008ʼs “Ocean Fire” (Willitsʼ collaboration with renowned pianist / composer Ryuichi Sakamoto), and 2010ʼs masterfully-crafted, genre-defying “Tiger Flower Circle Sun”.
Willits completed his Master's Degree in Electronic Music at Mills College where he studied with Pauline Oliveros and Fred Frith. At Mills he explored structure-generating processes in music; a focus not unfamiliar to former Mills affiliates John Cage and Steve Reich. Prior to Mills, Willits focused on painting, video art, sound art and music at the Kansas City Art Institute.
In addition to all of this, Willits is the founder / Director of the experimental media label Overlap.org .
Further Info and Contact -
http://christopherwillits.com
http://christopherwillits.com/press - (more features and reviews)
Travis Szendrei – Manager and Overlap Representative - [email protected]
Jeff Owens – Label Manager at Ghostly International – [email protected]
http://ghostly.com/artists/christopher-willits
Pitchfork – August 2010
“Willits is, in fact, a painter, as well as a multimedia artist. Much of Willits' music is created through self-designed software, which
means that he manipulates the conduit that manipulates his guitar-- he paints with his guitar. “
Electronic Musician – December 2010
“Guitarist, singer, and educator, Christopher Willits says his ambition for Tiger Flower Circle Sun (Ghostly International, 2010) was
no less than to represent “the oneness of everything.”
The Milk Factory - July 2010
“If anything, Tiger Flower Circle Sun is even more eclectic and rich than Surf Boundaries, and here, Christopher Willits dares to push much deeper into abstract territories to create this rather impressive
soundtrack.”
Tiny Mixed Tapes - July 2010
“He looks to his tools not for their sophistication, but for their potential as co-creators in his process of bringing ideas to life.”
Adequacy – July 2010
“Willitsʼ guitar-folding technique (jumbling of melodic content according to mathematically precise parameters supplied by custom-
built software patches and plugins), [that] yields not only blissfully ricocheting melodies, but also provides rhythmic peculiarities that
end up making this music feel alive.”
Chain D.L.K -‐ August 2010
“ [These tracks} are lovely examples of an equilibrium between experimental and pop.”
Culture Clash – July 2010
“Tiger Flower Circle Sun continues his brand of incredibly intelligent compositions that manage to be hard to pinpoint into a genre. While Willits continues to explore and experiment, he manages to keep his
songs and ideas succinct.”
Big Shot Magazine – July 2010
“The album flows by fluidly, with each piece logically and confidently giving way to the next as Willits intersperses sparse tone poems between expansive jams that sit somewhere between kosmische, psychedelia, and sepia-tinted California pop. Tiger Flower Circle
Sun makes it clear that Willits has found his creative voice... “
Exclaim.Ca - September 2010
“With Tiger Flower Circle Sun, his 20th or so album, and second for Ghostly International, hardworking genius Christopher Willits has
struck a perfect balance between contemporary experimental and glitch music”
Urb – July 2010
“Itʼs clear that Christopher Willits brings a lot together for this album - classical Minimalism a la Glass & Reich, gentle indie-pop
songwriting, and relentless experimentation.“
Create Digital Music – August 2010
“The composer and artist spins unique, organic ambient worlds with layers of sound and pattern, transforming the timbres of his guitar.
Beautifull Noise – July 2010
“With Tiger Flower Circle Sun, Willits has created a diverse, effortlessly complex album of sublime beauty.”
Sound and Recording Magazine (JAPAN) – September 2010
The Stranger – July 2010
“…I said Iʼd follow Willits anywhere, and Tiger Flower Circle Sun is ultimately nothing less than a voyage from the soil of our planet to its
point of origin in the massive, unknowable cosmos.”
Fluid Radio – July 2010
“Tiger Flower Circle Sun”, the most recent outing for the prolific electronic guitarist Christopher Willits is a complex and impressive
effort, fifteen tracks of dense and eclectic explorations of the interconnectedness of all things… “
Pitchfork Media – November 2006
“[Colors Shifting is] one of the best blissed-‐out dream-‐pop tracks we’ve heard this year.”
Cool Hunting – Oct 2006
“[Surf Boundaries is] genuinely beautiful mature song-‐craft, unafraid of taking on the bleeding edge.
“…a gorgeous blend of shoegazer guitar, custom-‐designed software, glitchery, lush 5-‐part vocal harmonies, treated brass and strings, and jazz improvisation,
perfectly timed for the changing colors of fall.”
URB – November 2006
this quiet album, a lush thicket of processed guitars and angelic vocals, takes listeners on another type of intimate trip
Music For Robots – Nov 2006
“Four Tet or Manitoba (Caribou) at their best. Very highly recommended.”
Playboy.com – November 2006
“Let the guitars fold around you like a blanket, or risk getting the chills.”
Lost at Sea – November 2006
“[Willits has] an unrivaled sense of sonic inhibition.”
The Milk Factory - October 2006
“Willits dips his range into breezy California pop to produce a record that sends the Beach Boys into orbit with no intention of ever
bringing them back down to earth. …The songs on Surf Boundaries are colourful expressions of various emotional states, which build up
deep within each piece…”
XLR8R Magazine - How-To Tech feature, November 2006
XLR8R Magazine - How-To Tech feature, November 2006 – pg2
SF Weekly - October 2006
“Surf Boundaries is open for exploration, and thereʼs plenty to discover within these colorful folds.”
San Francisco Bay Guardian - October 2006
“The Mills College graduateʼs musical career has quickly taken flight since his move to the Bay in 2000.”
Seattle Stranger - December 2006
“Willits's music has the half-‐formed feeling of dawn or dusk, the intangible quality of a constantly drifting line, which lends the record its name.
Instrumental interludes give way to dreamy, incoherent pop songs, often within single tracks. The result is a strangely cohesive mix of blippy, minute electronics
and lush vocal/instrumental harmonies.”
Guitar One Magazine - 2006
East Bay Express – Overlap.orgʼs Listen series feature, 2006
WIRE Magazine - 2002
“Just shy of transforming into a Rube Goldberg mechanism, Willits addressed [his]implements with the adroitness of a medieval harpist. The processed fragments ofstaccato picking came to resemble Steve Reichʼs work with the Pulse Gate andevoked the cyclical aura of his
Four Organs.”
URB Magazine – 2004 Selected as one of the “Next 100” artists.
E/I Magazine - 2006 “One of electronic music’s most charismatic performers.”
XLR8R Magazine – October 2010
“Christopher Willits is a bit of a virtuoso – in the past 10 years he has produced 20 albums, both solo and in collaboration with experimental heavyweights
Matmos and Ryuichi Sakamoto.”
Impose Magazine – September 2010
Christopher Willits has made incredible strides as a musician and a producer since his 2006 Ghostly debut, Surf Boundaries. Examining the universal themes of love and light, this album contains excitable sounds, from the percolating pulses that provide the foundation for most of the songs to the processed bits
of digital information skittering to and fro with joyous anticipation.
Bleep – July 2010
“Tiger Flower Circle Sun is the latest solo record from audio-‐visual composer and guitarist Christopher Willits. Having worked with Taylor Deupree, Ryuichi
Sakamoto and Matmos in the past he draws together a vast array of styles for this record that owes as much to Aphex Twin, as to the psychedelic collage
music of Broadcast, Reich’s minimalism and even the Beach Boys.”
“Tiger Flower Circle Sun takes us on an abstract voyage from the sun to the stars and despite its eclectic elements never loses coherence as a whole. Willits has created a truly genre-‐defying album that is complex and experimental, yet
warm, uplifting and full of fun.”
The Milk Factory – Featured Interview – March 2009
Guitarist and electronic manipulator Chris Willits is a pioneer and a teacher, exploring new methodologies for signal processing, while publicly sharing his techniques through the video series What You Talkin’ ‘Bout Willits? for XLR8R.
The latest EP from Willits’ side project, Flossin, with Zach Hill from Hella, features a who’s who of experimental musicians, from Matmos to Strategy to
Wobbly.
Tokafi – Interview – February 2008
Right now, Christopher Willits is a happy man: The sun is shining, he is working on new music and 12k have just published "Ocean Fire", his musical meeting
with Japanse legend Ryuichi Sakamoto, an album which he calls "another dream that has become very tangible". For the past years, his circle of friends has
steadily grown and Willits has gone on to study with Pauline Oliveros and Fred Frith, record with Taylor Deupree and video artist Scott Pagano, turning into a priority on the eclectic roster of Ghostly International. In a way, "Ocean Fire" now brings together various aspects of Christopher Willits' oeuvre in a single, coherent and utterly unique work: His use of experimental and extended guitar
playing techniques, his "sculptural" and "visual" approach, the fluent combination of improvisation and composition and his love for collaborations
Nowness – August 2010
“San Francisco’s Christopher Willits is part tech geek, part guru. With his fair, shoulder-‐length hair and piercing blue eyes he could pass as a scrubbed-‐up (and uncharacteristically cheerful) Kurt Cobain, but there’s nothing grungy about the mesmerizing, intricate electronic soundscapes that constitute his latest album Tiger Flower Circle Sun. … [Christopher Willits is} universal talent, not only a
virtuosic musician but an adept computer programmer—to create his shimmering walls of sound he uses his own custom software (he began inventing his own guitar effects when he was 13), and accompanies live
performances with interactive visuals, the latest of which are controlled via the stroke of an iPad. In the past decade he’s recorded an astonishing 20 albums, collaborating with musicians such as Ryuichi Sakamoto, Matmos and Kid606
iTunes Japan – “Ocean Fire” Featured – Winter 2008 -‐ Front Feature
Side Feature
“You can hear each musician's strengths shine through, from Sakamoto's cinematic mastery of transformed piano notes to Willits' crackling pulses and
elastic tones.”
Dusted – Feb 2008
“Over the course of his career, Ryuichi Sakamoto has collaborated with a pretty celebrated list of musicians and artists, from Iggy Pop to Youssou N'Dour, Naim June Paik to David Sylvian. On Ocean Fire, Sakamoto is paired with processed-‐guitar whiz Christopher Willits on an ambient venture "dedicated to the healing
and restoration of our fragile oceans." The album's inspiration is rendered clearly; one can hear the ocean in much of the music, with placid undulations
rippled by subtle undercurrents and gentle waves.”
Electronic Musician Magazine – April 2008
Neat categories have never been a hallmark of Ryuichi Sakamoto's music. From bubblegum pop ditties to avant-‐garde classical fugues, the Japanese-‐born
pianist and composer has pretty much done it all since going solo in 1984 after playing with the internationally renowned synth-‐rock trio Yellow Magic
Orchestra.Recently Sakamoto recruited San Francisco Bay Area guitarist and producer Christopher Willits to record Ocean Fire (12k, 2008), a many-‐layered sonic canvas of improvised ambience based on a 4-‐hour session that took place
at Sakamoto's New York studio in early 2007.
Performer Magazine – Nov 2006
Willits’ music shares commonalities with artists as diverse as M83, Múm, and Sufjan Stevens — more than one reviewer has compared it to a Venn diagram of musical genres, laying in the union of ambient, laptop electronica, chamber-‐pop, post-‐rock and shoegaze sets. (In fact, Willits is part of Overlap.org, a
creative collective that uses a Venn diagram as its logo.)
Debug Magazine – November 2006
Treehugger – July 2010
Big Shot Magazine – December 2010
“Sonic architect/instrumentalist Christopher Willits‘ Tiger Flower Circle Sun was a sunny pastiche of dreamy, joyous and beautiful tracks that had me California
dreaming…”
XLR8R Magazine – Willits’ Top Ten – Jan 2007
Radiothon – RRR radio Australia – Jan 2007 – Interview and Feature
“With such commitment to his art, it is little wonder that Christopher Willits’ sounds are being heard all over the world.”
SF Weekly – Sept 2006
“…let the ebullient human hums and sparkling guitar folds alight among your travels around the city.”
San Francisco Bay Gaurdian – May 2009 – Interview + Listen/Vision (Overlap event)
Entertainment Weekly – Oct 2006
Shenzen Daily – June 2008
XLR8R Magazine – Jan 2008
“Groundbreaking guitar tweaker Christopher Willits and Japanese guru Ryuichi Sakamoto are (most) concerned with exploring sonic textures…”
Stylus Magazine – Sept 2006 – Interview
Christopher Willits is a busy man. As one-‐third of Flössin, he creates the melodies that float through Zach Hill’s harried drumming and Miguel Depedro's wild electronic maelstrom. As one-‐half of North Valley Subconscious Orchestra, he teams up with former Medicine guitarist Brad Laner for inspired avant-‐pop experiments. Willits is probably more popularly known, however, for the music he makes under his own name. As one of the more accessible acts on the 12k label, Willits guitar playing captivated on his 2002 disc, Folding, and the Tea.
Future Music – Feb 2007
“[Willits] elevates the role of the guitar from supporting cast member to main character.”
Pitchfork – Jan 2008 – Willits + Sakamoto Feature
XLR8R / CCmixter (Creative Commons) Remix Contest for “Colors Shifting” – Fall 2006
The WIRE – April 2008
“Christopher Willits is no stranger to (the) balance between the organic and the schematic – he’s spent much of the last decade feeding his guitar through custom-‐built software to create finely nuanced and constantly regenerative
textures.”
The Milk Factory – Ocean Fire – Willits + Sakamoto – Feb 2008
Ocean Fire is the result of the meeting of two visionary musicians willing to explore a common creative ground.
AOL Music – October 2006
Bay Area electro-‐indie guru Christopher Willits meshes live instrumentation with intelligent electronic sounds via his Jamie Lidell-‐style homemade software and gear. The result is a fresh sound remincencent of Stereolab in their heydey. Keep reading to download MP3s, get tour dates and learn more about Willits.
