The Music of Mick Barr

An overview of the career thus far of the visionary, maverick composer Mick Barr (Krallice, Orthrelm, Octis, Ocrilim)

[@weaselwalter666]

one note about the ocrilim "annoint" record was that this came directly after mick's stint in the flying luttenbachers and the use of harmony and motivic transformation was directly influenced by "the void" by the luttenbachers, which was an album with seven movements all using a recurring set of specific clusters, chords, rhythmic figures and a descending melodic fragment which reappear during all the pieces. mick had never dealt with explicit harmony in his mature music before that. of course, these are old, tried and true methods - ones i was borrowing from the sources of messiaen and bartok in particular at the time - but mick took it and made this incredible album with the concepts. i agree, this is one of his masterpieces and a huge step forward for him!

[@charlielookerNYC]

I should definitely return to The Void. Great great record :) My favorite FL is still Systems Emerge. Yeah all your stuff from that period was super motivic!

[@weaselwalter666]

@@charlielookerNYC thank you! the paradox of structure and chaos . . . LOL. what can ya do. i try to be coherent in my nonsense. enjoyable overview of mick's incredible body of work. new luttenbachers lp in may (and it's back to the brutal prog, no more jazz fusion!) cheers

[@charlielookerNYC]

@@weaselwalter666 I’m psyched you’re going back to brutal prog man. I want to hear it! I’m working on some new stuff now that’s wayyyyy more back in the complexity mode. I was reacting against that for while, and now I’m coming back around. Our aesthetic math-paths are converging once again.

[@illuminatibraincontrol]

@@weaselwalter666 Dude I love ya and would love to hear more Encenathrakh one of these days. Hearing you, Paulo, Colin and Mick all on one (hell, two) album(s) is just madness. Sidenote... Nandor Nevai messaged me randomly on discogs one time and said a bunch of crazy anti-Semitic conspiracy shit and said you stole "pressroll-blasting" or something from him. Are you two chill now and is he more of a Nazi or more just straight up insane? Also guessing you've heard free jazzers press roll before anyone knew it was a thing... Sorry its the question that's been burning in my head ever since that experience lol

[@WritingOnGames]

The bit where you're talking about the repetition of OV and how it ends up accentuating the less obvious parts of the music over time is really interesting, because it's the exact experience I've had listening to the "hook" of Nobody Wants to be Had for the past decade and a half, haha. I hear the attack of the pick on the strings differently every time and it rules. Just wanted to say that I really love what you've been doing with this channel over the last year or so. The weirder side of the 2000s New York scene (your projects especially) was maybe *the* key aspect of my musical upbringing from my early teens. It has continued to define how I view art to this day, so to hear you not only articulate what made the music so special, but also contextualise it through your own experiences with the people who made it (in such a casual way, no less) has been really, really cool. Thanks!

[@charlielookerNYC]

I deeply appreciate hearing that great feedback about the channel :) Yeah something like Nobody Wants to be Had was very influenced by the general ideas being tossed around that scene at the time. There's the individual brilliance of Mick, and then there's the more collective set of ideas that springs up at a certain place and time.

[@williamscerbo458]

Man, I'm glad I'm not the only one. I'm a bit younger but discovering Zs when I was in high school back in 2011 opened up so many musical pathways to new worlds for me, leading me to Charlie's music and so much other stuff...like OV by Orthrelm. That composition continues to blow my mind to this day.

[@BirdsOfGlass]

Orthrelm is like pleasant anxiety if there is such a thing.

[@unARTigNYC]

So good!

[@neutralarchive137]

Such an amazing exploration of Mick's music. Would absolutely love to hear you to do an interview with him if you could pull him away from tremeloing an instrument for a minute

[@chromecodec]

this ruled, set me down a nice listening path i haven't touched in a long time. i'd love to hear an analysis like this of maudlin of the well/kay dot's music.

[@alexdebling1564]

Great video. Initially when hearing Mick's music, I liked his more multi-phonic and less repetitive work and was bored/turned off by his more repetitive stuff, but as time progresses that stuff is really growing on me as well. It's both minimal and maximal at the same time and has a droning and trance like quality that I'm appreciating more and more. Another underground guitarist/composer that I'm sure you know and your audience would really dig; Brandon Seabrook. Love his solo work, but I also love him with Chris Pitsiokos' band with Weasel Walter and Tim Dahl. I like a lot of the other new york guys and folks associated with that scene, as I can hear the extreme metal/noise rock influences, modern classical influences as well as the diy/metropolitan jazz influence of guys like Tim Berne and Marc Ducret. It's really the best of all extremes.

[@charlielookerNYC]

Yeah those are all my boys! That Pitsiokos band is killer

[@sparvtyngd]

Thanks for the suggestion! Looked up Brandon Seabrook and l immediately got excited by the music. (By the way l found the music of Mick Barr through a (stupid) list of 10 fastest guitarists.)🪐☄️🪐

[@alexdebling1564]

@@sparvtyngdlol I love those lists. Fastest = Bestest, amirite? ;)

[@funkbeastbasslover]

The DI/Metal Zone is the trvest tone

[@video_ouija7114]

Excellent. Met him at a krallice show a few years ago, bought all the records and they threw one in for free. What a guy

[@mattdowie92]

Your video brought the music of Mick Barr to my attention. I have been exploring it for the past year. Thanks, Charlie, for introducing me to new music that I would probably not have heard otherwise.

[@veneratetheplough5782]

thanks for this. would you ever consider doing a video on krallice in particular? might be interesting in the context of your recent video on black metal/death metal

[@snavenai]

I saw him play in Orthrelm (by complete chance in London, UK) and it was my gateway into a lot of music. I was blown away.

[@charlielookerNYC]

That's awesome that Orthrelm made it over there. I still don't have a clear sense of how many people even saw or heard them.

[@snavenai]

@@charlielookerNYC I think they were supporting The Locust in London, but I might be mis-remembering. I was really lucky to see them.

[@charlielookerNYC]

@@snavenai oh tight yeah they definitely toured with the Locust

[@snavenai]

@@charlielookerNYC they were really good too. I was really obsessed with math rock-type stuff at the time. Orthrelm were a really new thing to me though.

[@lambertronix]

ha khanate is such a "make your wife doubt her judgement in marrying you" music

[@charlielookerNYC]

Oh man. They're a rare band where I find the music legitimately scary, even while knowing that the guys are completely chill and and un-scary. That's hard to accomplish

[@lambertronix]

@@charlielookerNYC i hear mick isn't a big fan of interviews but i'd be stoked if you did a stream with him...

[@deluge71]

Great analysis, my friend. It is perhaps the best I've heard on Mick and his many forms. Your knowledge and insight really show here. Many thanks, Charlie!

[@charlielookerNYC]

So glad you enjoy this so much. Thanks for saying so

[@plewlonehitknown4812]

my fav guitarfeeler. Thx to you speaking about him. He should be the water of this planet.

[@owenbrafford6479]

I have no idea why youtube didn't tell me you made this video, so I'm late. This is excellent! I found Annwn in college while browsing around on last.fm (that site introduced me to a lot of great stuff - Mick Barr's work, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and I think Zs!). I was deep into Opeth at the time, though I was studying music theory and history - Annwn busted everything apart, and I was able to reconcile all my interests together. I owe a lot to that album. It was really great hearing stories about the scene - I'm sure I speak for lots of folks when I say that New York in the 2000s was a scene to be jealous of (though 2005 - 2012 or so in Minneapolis was rad!). Much love!

[@theactorjohnlarroquette]

I feel like one could make the case that Massacre are a proto brutal prog band. Ofc, everyone would roll their eyes but one could still do it

[@pseen]

OLDEST!!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️

[@mattdrummist]

don't forget Encenathrakh

[@Nevada_Nieves]

How could I ever forget Black Eyes?

[@lambertronix]

mick is incredible

[@stevesullivan8405]

This was really wonderfully put together, Charlie. Thanks very much.

[@charlielookerNYC]

Thanks for watching Steve

[@TheZooropaBaby]

It’s good timing, Mick released an album today

[@HighwayNegative]

What's the album? Looked up Mick Barr 2021, couldn't find it

[@TheZooropaBaby]

​@@HighwayNegative ocrilim.bandcamp.com/album/blwch-ariam-eiraddfa it's under Ocrilim name

[@joshuapocalypse]

Anoint is incredible!

[@moletrane277]

i have never heard of him or his music until i saw this video of your (was introduced to you through your video on braxton) and wow this is mind-bending! it perfectly blends my love of complex classical work and noisy diy music. great job on this :)

[@davidecirillo9675]

Got a free copy of Qurotenthrough with Ygg huur back in 2015. Best surprise gift ever

[@BryanWBray]

Charlie, this is such a great overview of Mick's music. I share a lot of the same feelings you express about his work. Ecstatic music is perfect for so much of it, especially for OV. There is a live DVD that came out years ago where they play it all the way through that and it's amazing to watch as well, even just as a video. Can only imagine its power live. Mick played here once on a bill with Thrones where he showed up and did exactly what you described; plugged his SG into a metal zone and I thiiink he either had backing bass tracks or also an octave pedal and just ripped open a hole in time. That's basically a recipe for failure for so many others. Pretty sure he is actually an alien.

[@marztmaoc]

very cool breakdown. i remember my boy putting me on to mick back then but i never made the connection to all of these other bands at the time. and by "back then" i mean about 15 or so years ago lmao.

[@BirdsOfGlass]

Genius for sure.

[@humanoid9787]

Fantastic video

[@bivvystridents3752]

Dude. Totally wrong about the Jamey Jasta connection. He played in a band called Jasta 14. Jamey was the original singer and took his moniker from the band name. Mick was in the band long after Jamey left.

[@charlielookerNYC]

That's correct. Is that not what I said?

[@bivvystridents3752]

@@charlielookerNYC He never played with Jamey Shanahan.

[@sonder152]

I'm a massive Krallice fan at the moment and was mindblown when I first made the connection that it had Mick Barr from Orthrealm which I had heard before because of OM. Also it's amazing that he has some stuff on Zorn's Tzadik label. (Zorn is my idol in life) Krallice is one of my favorite bands at the moment, not only the genius of Mick Barr but the genius of Colin Marston (from Behold The Arctopus and other groups) too. I can tell that Mick Barr was one of the musical inspirations behind John Zorn's incredible Simulacrum Project (which is still current).

[@Ryan-fs2xj]

Orthrelm sounds horrendous

[@charlielookerNYC]

lol

[@progfox]

lol

[@stevesullivan8405]

Obviously you're confusing that term with the killer Philly metal band. Easy to do, I'll give you a pass friend.

[@poopyjoe7883]

yo, great video highlighting who is in one of my opinion one of the most overlooked guitarists of our time, thanks for taking the time to do this. also love the tapestry in the back!

[@charlielookerNYC]

Thanks so much for engaging. Mick truly does need more of place in the history