Nico Guerrero / Vortex

Nico Guerrero

Paris/Reykjavik

Nico Guerrero is a French experimental composer/guitarist, founding member of Vortex in the early 90’s. The 1st album "EKSAÏPHNES" (Les Disques du Soleil et de l’Acier, 2000) laid down the foundations for the frozen, cosmic and noisy universe that Nico was going to explore in solo later. Weaving textures of intense cosmic drones, his compositions reach out a certain sonic gigantism with a fairly minimalist instrumentation: a sole electric guitar and occult electronic alterations. The strings seems to resonate like hallucinatory echoes of organ clusters, expanding towards the infinite and implosing at the same time. In this very dense space of overtones, almost symphonic, ghost sounds appear from a swirling Magick chaos. His new album "ATHANOR", a duet with American composer Rhys Chatham, will be released in June 2024 on the US label Erototox Decodings. Nico met the composer/guitarist/trumpet player in Paris in 2012. Since, he played several performances with him in studio, on stage, in duet and as co-conductor for the 100 Guitars Ensemble at Le Havre in june 2018. The 2019 Nico album «LIVE AT THE NORDIC HOUSE» was recorded during the Iceland Airwaves festival in Reykjavik, inspired by the wild Icelandic lanscapes and loneliness. The album pays tribute to artists like Coil (with the cover of “A Cold Cell”) and Nico (of V.U.) whose specter is felt to barely veiled on “Clepsydra”. By an invitation of Kim Cascone & the San Francisco-based label Silent Records, he appears in the “Dark Indicator 2 – Guitar & String Drones Collection” album (Oct. 2020) with among others Makoto Kawabata and Gérard Pape. This will be followed by the release of his latest studio album "Streams of Oblivion" (Silent Records/June 2021). The music has been entirely composed in Reykjavik in winter 2021 and recorded/mixed in Paris on March 2021. Imbued with esoteric references, the 7 instrumental compositions for 2 to 5 electric guitars build a cathedral of sounds, summoning haunted drones with depthcharges of guitar overtones, all dedicated to the Icelandic telluric forces, volcanoes, entities, ghosts and deities The whole is deep, close to ceremonial, sometimes cold, bright or abstract, evoking a deep melancholy. It could remind the mood of Current 93, Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson or other works of droners like William Basinski or Kali Malone.

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