Trey Gunn’s musical journey has been a fascinating one. Perhaps best known for his work with King Crimson and for being quite possibly the world’s leading exponent on touch guitar, he now divides his time between solo work, writing scores for film and television, and running his own multi-media production company, Quodia. Constantly seeking to widen possibilities through exploration of the world of film, art, music, photography, and literature, Gunn’s work is both multi-layered and multi-dimensional.
Music For Pictures is a collection of twenty-eight brief and one full length exploration into that world and is precisely what it says, music for visual images. His work with both Brian Eno and Robert Fripp has clearly helped expand his entire approach to his art form and has resulted in solo albums that are both compelling and fascinating. It was however the moment when Trey Gunn first saw, heard, and picked up a touch guitar that a whole new world of possibilities began to be realized for him. He has since become the leading light in its use both with King Crimson and with his solo work.
Trey Gunn originates from Texas but is now based in Seattle. His career to date has seen him work with not only Eno and Fripp, but also David Sylvian and John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin fame, appearing on his 1999 album Zooma, among a whole host of other diverse musical talents. In 2004 he fully immersed himself in his quest to explore multi-dimensional art forms and this development gave rise to the formation of his production company Quodia. Through Quodia, Gunn produces concerts that fully integrate not only live music but also film, storytelling, and language. It is multi-faceted and multi-cultural resulting in the Quodia show being taken out to Russia, South America, and Scandinavia.
By this time he had been busily involved in writing scores for television and film and this latest solo release, Music For Pictures, is a collection of such explorations recorded between 2003 and 2008. It includes pieces originally scored for Pavel Ruminov’s “Dead Daughters” film. He says of the work, "Scoring for film and moving images is a very different kind of process from writing for a musical performance. With film, the music must serve as a frame for the story being told. Onstage, the flow of the music is the story".
The tracks on Music For Pictures range from under a minute such as “Hammerhead” and “Hari’s Dream” to the magnificent twenty-one minute epic that is “The Ghosts Listen”. With every play you hear something new, something different, or something challenging. The titles of the tracks may influence your thinking in some way but perhaps the best way to experience this album is to immerse yourself within it and form your own imagery to each soundtrack you listen to, thereby linking the audio to the imagination, sound to sight. It is a fascinating journey by a fascinating man and one made even more tantalising when you realise that there are many further discoveries and journeys left for him to take.
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