Paolo Angeli

Speaking of punk and jazz, there's Paolo Angeli. Sardinia's madly imaginative master of the guitar—albeit a fabulously souped-up guitar of his own invention—veers, in a dreamy and almost stream-of-consciousness kind of way, between the traditional music of his island homeland, improvisational jazz, and punk with a palette of super-saturated colors and amazing textures… Top 10 WOMEX 2014."

Anastasia Tsioulcas, NPR Radio

Whatever you want to call it, nobody else is doing it quite like this. Paolo Angeli, the Sardinian sorcerer, manually magics beautiful, multi-layered music from his unique prepared guitar: a hybrid orchestra of an instrument with strings going in all directions, foot-pedal-controlled motorized propellers, and hammers to create shimmering drones and bass lines as he bows, strikes, plucks, and strums while producing rhythmic atmospherics by treading on a plastic bag and adjusting tunings on the fly. Electronic effects are utilized but no loops. All is live. With this singular instrument, he improvises and composes unclassifiable music, suspended between traditional music of Sardinia, jazz, baroque, post-folk, and pre-everything else. He has collaborated with Pat Metheny—for whom he built a guitar—Fred Frith, Hamid Drake, Louis Sclavis, Iva Bittova, Butch Morris, Paolo Fresu, Jon Rose, Antonello Salis, Evan Parker, Ned Rothenberg, Takumi Fukushima, Enkhjargal Dandarvaanchig, etc.