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Bill Horist
Discography / Photos / Press / Videos

"Seattle's preeminent experimental guitarist." The Stranger "Bill Horist is one of those people out there in the world who is so prolific and interconnected that he has virtually no competitors." Baby Sue "While, in the last several years, the guitar is considered “more in terms of its limitations than its capabilities, Bill Horist [explores] the guitar’s continued presence as a vital and still challenging form of musical expression.” Willamette Week

North Pole Records is honored to release guitarist, Bill Horist’s, newest album Covalent Lodge. An intricately orchestrated master album featuring Horist’s haunting and deliberate finger pickings along with exquisite musicianship by Grammy recipient Matt Chamberlain on drums, Eyvind Kang (Zorn, Beck, Ribot) on viola, vocalist B.R.A.D. (ASVA,The Accused, MMOB) and jam-packed with other A-list musicians. Most of Horist’s solo albums consist of electric prepared guitar work, but Covalent Lodge is notable for it’s traditional acoustic qualities captured by engineer and producer Randall Dunn (Sunn o))), Boris, Kinski, Earth) at Aleph Studios. Dunn and Horist are both members of mystical dirge metal super group Master Musicians of Bukakke (Conspiracy Records).
Horist’s deft fingers pull extended and winding guitar lines through a soundscape populated by strange choral voices, lumbering drums, long tone electronic drones, a harmonically twisting string section, and beckoning horns from outposts in some open wild desert. Performed with stellar musicianship, the songs are precise and calmly accessible. It sounds like the reverberating ghost of some multi-cultural Morricone orchestra, or Jim O’Rourke doing weird world-beat ambient numbers under hypnosis. The ethereal qualities of the songs move with subdued tension. A familiar ghost in a haunted lodge, soothing and unsettling.

Since moving to Seattle in 1995, Bill Horist has established himself as a noted improviser/composer/performer. In the past decade, he has appeared on over 40 recordings and has performed almost 700 concerts in Canada, Mexico, Europe, Japan and throughout the US. Bill has performed and/or recorded with Bill Frisell, Wayne Horvitz, KK Null, Trey Gunn(King Crimson), Chris Cutler, Kawabata Makoto (Acid Mothers Temple), William Hooker, Trey Spruance( Mr Bungle/Secret Chiefs 3), Eugene Chadbourne, Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins), Amy Denio, Uchihashi Kazuhisa, Steve Fisk, Anla Courtis (Reynols), Lesli Dalaba, Paul Hoskin, Thomas Dimuzio, Wally Shoup, Jessica Lurie, Mason Jones, Jeff Grienke, and Tucker Martine as well as members of Earth, The Boredoms and Larsen among others.
As a solo artist, Bill’s improvised, prepared guitar work is informed by Hans Reichel, Fred Frith, and Henry Kaiser, but shows a unique style and personality. He has received critical praise internationally from periodicals including The Wire and Alternative Press, and several of his recordings have made critics’ year-end lists. Bill was featured in the March 2007 issues of Guitar Player Magazine and Earshot Jazz Magazine. In 2005 and 2006, he was nominated for "Jazz Artist of the Year" (despite his total inability to play jazz!) and "Guitarist of the Year" respectively by the Seattle Weekly. He was the recipient of the 2006 GAP grant, 2005 Artist Trust Fellowship, the 1997 Jack Straw Artist Assistance Program Grant and has done several presentations and workshops at schools from first grade to college-level, including the University of Calgary, Seattle Art Institute, Martin Luther King Elementary (Seattle), the Experience Music Project and Big Picture School for at-risk youth.
Bill improvises and composes for film, dance and theater as well. In the Fall 2002, he was composer in residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts where he developed a solo guitar score for University of Calgary choreographer, Davida Monk's "Lyric". Bill continues to work with Calgary's M-Body Dance company.