Rhys Chatham
A Crimson Grail (for 400 Electric Guitars)

Rhys Chatham, the man who rocks the minimalist canon like a hurricane, gathers up the City of Light in the evanescent beauty of his latest piece, written for 400 guitars and performed live in the basilica of landmark Sacre Coeur, with an audience of 10,000 watching live and 100,000 viewing on TV. As the music shimmers, it offers a snapshot of eternity, an echo of a moment a thousand years gone, and a thousand years to come.

It's a remarkable, engrossing work that plays against rather than panders to expectations. If you picture the sound of such a large ensemble of guitarists, it's likely that you'll imagine an overpowering wall of sound, but Chatham's approach is more subtle than that. The initial section of the 35-minute first part is an extended process of initially subdued, but gradually swelling sound. That sound is something like a metallic jangling as if mile upon mile of barbed wire were amplified. At the eight-minute mark, a simple, steady pulse begins to be marked out by percussion and bass, around which the massed guitars cluster and reverberate. Fifteen minutes later the rhythm ceases and the music enters a becalmed passage, the guitarists picking and strumming to create a sense of cloud-like porousness. A final, extended section of intense, massed thrumming overlays this. Played loud, it threatens to lift the listener off their feet and shake the ornaments from the shelves. It's half an hour in arriving, but this is sound that achieves an immersive, exultant sense of the sublime.””
—BBC Review

“A Crimson Grail was meant as a piece written in multiple movements, much like an orchestral arrangement, except for a group four times the size of a full symphony orchestra. Everything about the work is big, from the deep, soulful reverb of the basilica to the unapologetically heavy tone. When Chatham starts the first movement of his work, excerpted above, the atmosphere changes color quickly into an aurora of vibrating strings which disappears in a flash as soon as the short tacets let the guitars ring.  It’s a bold, grand sound that builds itself into a heavy/light dynamic … the massive crescendo suddenly changes in character from a stoic musical golem into a ghostly rhythmic march. Heavy and endlessly complex, this movement flexes the muscles of 400 guitar players and shows the audience exactly the kind of organized chaos it can wreak.”
— fnewsmagazine

“Uncannily, the guitars climb separately in small shifts, yet invariably meet at each apex. As the echoes lengthen, the piece evokes a huge frozen wave, full of dense overtones and hymn-like hums. The cinematic drift of the Kranky roster and the power drones of Phill Niblock come to mind, but the glow of Chatham's guitar army has a singular warmth. This wasn't just a performance, it was a larger-than-life sonic environment. And A Crimson Grail offers the best panoramic snapshot one could hope for.”
— Pitchfork

“Gathered in a French basilica, the guitarists performed the piece to an audience of nearly 10,000 attendants inside and outside the basilica. The result is a beautiful, evolving, slowly rising three-song orchestra of 400 guitars fluidly composed along, droning, eventually bursting into crescendo.”
— Jackson Free Press

“It’s like a heavenly buzz saw in your brain, a billion bees coming over the horizon and blocking out the sun. In quieter moments when they’re playing harmonics, your mind’s eye sees icicles forming on every pine tree in Norway … the epic simplicity provokes a sense of elation.”
— Time Out, Australia

“It’s the most direct escalator ride from confusion into redemption, always Chatham’s main stock in trade. Even as the recording strains to clock the absurd vastness of the performance, it packs a sweeping emotional charge. It’s music that can bring back stirring, conflicted memories through a three-inch wall.”
— Dusted

“The climaxes evoke the image of an endless tape loop fashioned from a Phil Spector instrumental backing track, yet instead of Spector’s back-to-mono gravy we get Chatham’s clean and precise multichannel panning, which sounds especially compelling through headphones.”
— Gramophone