Ryley Walker and Kikagaku Moyo

As Ryley’s Husky Pants label continues to bloom into a fertile ground for experimentation, here it becomes a necessary hub of documention some of the guitarist’s historical high water marks as well. The set on Deep Fried Grandeur was recorded live at Le Guess Who? in 2018. The Utrecht festival boasts a long history of collaboration and genre-defining/defying performances, and the meeting of Walker and Kikagaku Moyo on the stage is a performance that practically beged to be documented, pressed and pondered. This is exactly the argument for live records done right. With Cooper Crain mixing it down in Chicago post performance, the record quite honestly bears few hallmarks of a live record. There are no surges of applause, no banter, just the assembled players finding their way around the cosmic cloud for a touch under an hour.

The pieces are truly two halves of a whole experience, the time needed to flip is just a breath between sonic sculptures, haunted and hungry. Molten wax guitars, percolating sweat rhythms, sonic symbiosis and, well as the band so succinctly puts it — deep fried grandeur. Sometimes the best phrase is already cast. This performance proves essential for both KM fans and collectors of Ryley’s ever-growing pieces of his live improv pantheon. Another Bandcamp holiday is upon us, the least you can do is give some love to this near-perfect documentation of mind-fry goodness.

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