A guitar, a pedal, an amplifier. It is with this modest survival kit, a manifesto of intentions, that Nina Garcia has been awakening this instrument to unexplored territories, as captivating as they are intriguing. Without confining herself to the stronghold of the most bovine noise, aseptic virtuosity, or the autistic usefulness of extended techniques, Garcia takes the technique by its most sensitive side, with a keen ear, to draw from the six strings contours of abstraction, melody, and noise in a design that is very much her own. After a decade of albums and concerts under the alias Mariachi, Garcia released her first album under her own name in 2025, entitled ‘Bye Bye Bird’ on Stephen O’Malley’s Ideologic Organ, in a vote of confidence that seems only natural, given everything that precedes it, between her work as an improviser, composer, educator, and a residency at the respected GRM. Adding to her reduced palette a handheld microphone that allows her to capture all the inflections and movements along the body of the guitar itself, Garcia amplifies all the gestures that reveal and conceal themselves in the instrument, translating this delivery into abrasive moments—yes, noise! -, delicate passages that bring melody, resonances, and hypnotic loops out of silence, and a careful management of these same processes. As Annette Krebs and Taku Sugimoto so aptly put it in the title of their album, “Eine Gitarre Ist Eine Gitarre Ist Eine Gitarre…”, but that can be so many things. Here is the proof.
BS