Olaf Rupp

guitar

"One of the most intense and focused solo electric guitar recitals that we've ever heard."
DOWNTOWN MUSIC GALLERY

"Olaf Rupp is like no guitarist I’ve ever heard before. (...) The music he creates from his guitar is made of many fleet notes in atonal runs, alternating with sonic clusters, as he seems to approach the guitar almost pianistically. If you have heard Cecil Taylor playing his intense brief improvisations, then you have the idea here. "
CADENCE MAGAZINE

"Olaf Rupp has been altering notions of what acoustic and electric improvised guitar music can sound like for more than 20 years."
DUSTED MAGAZINE

"Rupp's brain works as fast as his fingers, and he plays with impressive precision even at the fastest of tempi, but the music never sounds like mere technical display: each piece is unique and all are equally satisfying."
PARISTRANSATLANTIC

"Olaf Rupp's sound world is every bit as singular as that of both Derek Bailey and Hans Reichel, and his musical personality is every fathom as deep. "
ALL ABOUT JAZZ

Meine Musik ist Klangpointillismus, obwohl sie nur einfache, unpräparierte Gitarrentöne benutzt. Sie verlangt vom Zuhörer die Fähigkeit zu fokussieren, es sind Trickbilder, die in einer bestimmten Betrachtungsweise plötzlich ein neues, dreidimensionales Bild ergeben. Manchmal genügen wenige, langsame Töne - manchmal braucht es viele, dichte Tonketten. Wer hier Melodiösität oder dort expressive Extase vermutet, der hat es nicht verstanden. Beides sind Tongitter die einen dahinter liegenden virtuellen Klang beschreiben - so, wie die Bildpunkte eines Zeitungsfotos ein Bild im Kopf erzeugen. Die Musik wächst aus ihrem eigenen inneren Antrieb heraus, wie ein Kristall, ein Baum, wie Feuer, oder die Strudel im Wasser

My music is sonic pointillism, although it uses only untreated Guitar notes. It needs a listener who is able to focus - like riddle pictures that show a completely new, three-dimensional image after a while. Sometimes a few, slow notes are enough, sometimes it needs many, dense tone clusters. To think of melodiosity here and ecstatic expressionism there will get you on the wrong track. It is a tone-grid that defines an underlying, virtual sound - like the pixels of a picture in the newspaper create an image in your mind. The music grows on it´s own impulse like a crystal, a tree, a fire or vortex in the water.