William Tyler Behold The Spirit

William Tyler – Modern Country Release date: June 3, 2016 MRG 545 Modern Country is the fourth full-length album by guitarist and composer William Tyler and his first recorded outside of his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee. It features an ensemble backing group consisting of multi-instrumentalist Phil Cook (Hiss Golden Messenger, Blind Boys of Alabama), bassist Darin Gray (Tweedy, Jim O’Rourke), and percussionist Glenn Kotche (Wilco).

Guitarists Marisa Anderson and William Tyler distill deeply rooted and varied traditions into distinctive voices all their own. Anderson and Tyler are each unyielding in their desire to extend through those traditions and the confines of “guitar music” to craft music at once intimate and expansive, conversational and transcendent. The duo’s debut collaborative album tethers together their singular voices into unified narratives that glisten, drive, and sway. On Lost Futures, Anderson and Tyler’s guitars dance through lush arrangements and pastoral duets serpentine and reverent.

After crucial stints in Silver Jews and Lambchop, William Tyler emerged with a string of inquisitive albums that paired his country rearing and classical enthusiasm with his ardor for experimentation and field recordings. His productive enclave of instrumental music has not only ushered in new sounds, but also critical new voices. No other solo American guitarist this century has impacted that fecund scene quite like him. And on the brilliant, bracing Time Indefinite, Tyler’s first solo album in five years, he steps at last into the widening gyre he helped create. The guitar is the starting point for an album that will make you reconsider not only Tyler but also the possibilities of an entire field.

Recorded live at Yellowhammer Brewing in Huntsville, Alabama, in May 2021, Secret Stratosphere finds William Tyler and fellow psychedelic dreamers The Impossible Truth refashioning prime cuts from the Nashville guitarist's rich catalog, casting new light onto once-familiar songs. Featuring the crackling combo of Jack Lawrence (Raconteurs, Dead Weather), Brian Kotzur (Silver Jews, Country Westerns), and Luke Schneider (solo, Margo Price), the quartet stretch the dynamics of Tyler's compositions to their fullest inter-dimensional potential, exposing a deep undercurrent of kosmische and post-rock influences (with the right amount of grit from the nitrous corner of the Dead Lot).

"Darkness, Darkness" and “No Services” are two songs performed by Kieran Hebden and William Tyler. This is the first collaboration between Hebden, the producer and electronic musician also known as Four Tet, and Tyler, the Nashville-based guitarist and composer. William Tyler’s guitar parts for “Darkness, Darkness” were recorded by Jake Davis at Huge Planet in Nashville; his performance for “No Services” was recorded at The Tank in Rangely, CO.