COUGHS by Brian Ruryk

Brian Ruryk guitar, field recordings, various debris and litter

Has the word COUGHS ever been used as an album title before?
I think it has…
but no matter who did it first... Wait! let me start again, what a goddam phoney dirty bag fake guitarist… does he even know how to play? I mean let’s see him play a Charlie Parker transcription or some Chet Atkinson; James Burton or hell even some Takayanagi! But yeah, like Hendrix without the drugs (he had huge hands too), all it takes is a slap, like killing a mosquito and hitting the floor a few times, and then when you’re down long enough, there’ll be nothing left but perhaps a little ball bouncing? Nothing much to hear either, just more guitar overdubs, slurred phrases and the going’s on in one’s head. Methods? Unusual methods: balloons; branches; leaves. A melt down? Good luck. But wind blowing under a door, smoke stacks breathing; exhaust spewn from a muffler; or things like air vents expressing the pain of a furnace. All of these things inform this stuff. Even Eddie Lang's April Kisses, OUCH! you all should slap me! Hey! prepare your guitars all you want, you’ll never be prepared enough! Guitar is the mind, guitar amplifier the magical space... any way you dice it, the choice is yours.

When I was a teen I was cruising in a van with my friend, and we were blasting a cassette of Max Webster’s Oh War, it had just come out man. We were playing it loud, so we couldn’t hear the sirens, and then of course all of a sudden, the guns are drawn, and we hear the words get out of the vehicle!! It kinda shocked me and we got slapped on the wrists, but what it really did was make me think about sound and its masking properties.

So in closing, this is not just another Ruryk album, and again he's just trying to get it right, exposing additional details, offering more perspectives etc etc... just does the same thing over and over. I don’t see it ever ending.

since 1994

pay what you can afford

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