Michael Hix has become well known to Nashvillians who appreciate our wealth of outside-the-box musical endeavors. He’s the founder and bandleader of Nashville Ambient Ensemble, in which he focuses on keyboards. But in the wake of their Light and Space project, Hix revisited his relationship with electric guitar. Experiments in textural solo guitar composition, influenced by his meditation practice, led to his self-titled debut under a special name.
“Wonderful Aspiration of the Source is my lineage name in the Zen tradition I practice,” Hix writes in a release. “This album came from a place of needing to simplify. Music stopped being a standalone pursuit and became part of my mindfulness. These songs are more from the heart.”
Styrofoam Winos’ Trevor Nikrant encouraged Hix when he was trying to determine whether this material would be its own body of work or part of new NAE pieces, and Nikrant recorded the 10 pieces live in his studio. The sparse arrangements feature Hix using phrase-looping pedals with his B-bender Fender Telecaster, a device pioneered in the country-rock world to offer six-string players the ability to bend notes in ways that only pedal steel players readily have access to.Â
The minimalist approach allows rich, enveloping tones to fill the soundstage of evocative pieces like “After the Storm,” whose complementary harmonies and melody lines trace arcs like the contours of a landscape painting. (Being an incorrigible nerd, I’ll also point out that I hear a subtle shifting effect throughout the album that could be coming from a phaser, an old-school Univibe-style vibrato unit or a harmonic tremolo. Whatever it is, the movement dances with the rhythm of the pieces and adds an extra dimension.)Â
No-longer-local but still very rad indie label Centripetal Force released the album digitially and on a limited-edition LP Sept. 19. Pick up your copy via the Bandcamp embed and find the tracks on your favorite streaming service, and keep up with Hix on Instagram for updates.
