American avant-garde composer and guitarist Patrick Higgins will release his Dossier LP on June 1st via Nicolas Jaar’s Other People label. Higgins is known for his work in the experimental NYC project Zs, which he joined in 2012 to help with touring and recording. Since that time the musician has played on the group’s 2013 EP “Grain” (Northern-Spy Records), as well as co-composing and producing the 2015 LP effort Xe, also out on the label, as well as 2018’s Noth LP out via Social Noise. In addition, recent years have seen the musician rise to prominence as a contemporary composer having written numerous works for string quartet, chamber orchestra, and solo instruments including Higgins’ Bachanalia, an electro-acoustic record of classical guitar performances of the music of Johan Sebastian Bach, TOCSIN, performed at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn as a multi-media concert and art installation of Higgins’ chamber music, as well as “Hyperborea,” a piece written for string orchestra and live electronics performed by the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra in 2017. Prolific to say the least, Higgins also composed the score for the 2016 feature film As You Are (dir. by Miles Joris-Peyrafitte), which won a Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
Patrick Higgins’ upcoming release Dossier is an astounding four-movement work of solo guitar and custom electronics performed live without overdubs or edits. Developed over a two year period and first premiered back in 2016 during his 10 country European tour, the album features original programming and live sampling using midi triggers mapped to the guitar. With the instrument operating as a doorway into an extraordinary world of textured sound, Dossier explodes all previous notions of what the guitar is capable of. Below you can watch the musicians’ unparalleled technique as he performs sections of “Pitch Black” and “White Lie” live at Mottalciata in Torino, IT back in February of this year. The musician is also planning an upcoming European and US album tour for Dossier, and we will post the dates as soon as we know them.
