Marc Ribot: Solo Performance
Cafe Oto, Dalston, London: Day two of a two day residency
18 May 2025

Marc Ribot – guitar, vocals

Prolific American guitarist Marc Ribot sits hunched over his Gibson acoustic guitar as if listening to it’s inner soundings. He’s not using any effects pedals, and though there’s a music stand with a script 90 degrees to his right he gives this only one or two sideways glances in almost an hour and a half of playing.

Cafe Oto is sold out for Day two of what is a return visit. While he could easily sell out a much larger space, he clearly has a fondness for Cafe Oto’s intimate space as since his first solo gig there in 2013 he’s chosen to come back at least six times not counting this residency.

The semi circle of chairs are filled and behind them we’re standing three deep, with me right at the back. The natural intimacy of the room is enhanced further by being in darkness except for a single light on Ribot and the sense of anticipation is strong.

Grayson Haver Currin (indyweek.com) has given a helpful summary of Ribot’s story so far:
“..Across four decades, Ribot’s career has spanned smooth soul and gnarled blues, blaring no wave and elegant film scores, solo composer roles and Tom Waits supporting work; that’s only a sliver of his prolificacy…Though his solo range is only slightly less boundless than his overall discography, he favours quiet, intricate improvisations around standards that you will recognize in flashes but will rarely sound repetitive of their sources”.

He’s put out six solo albums including ‘John Zorn’s Book of Heads’ (1995) and ‘Marc Ribot Plays the Solo Works of Frantz Casseus’, (1993/2021 remastered), Casseus being his early mentor/teacher. These are part of a discography of twenty albums in his own name or that of his long standing trio Ceramic Dog, with bassist Shahzad Ismaily and drummer Ches Smith. The latest, and his first that’s an all vocal album, ’ Map of a Blue City’ came out on 23rd May 2025.

Tonight he starts with a sequence in which the standard ‘I’m in the Mood for Love’ nestles alongside Latin inflections, possibly an homage to Frantz Casseus, Coltrane’s ‘Amen’, Albert Ayler’s ‘Ghosts’, and a splash of blues. None of this sounds as in the original as Ribot searches for fresh angles in what seems a seamless improvisation, scratching and softly striking the body of his guitar and sometimes playing so quietly I had to strain to hear even though you could have heard the proverbial pin drop in the room.

His playing has a controlled intensity even in the quieter passages. His searching seems like that of an archaeologist seeking to reveal what lies hidden but has been there all the time, waiting to be discovered, with each of Ribot’s micro-tonal shifts aimed at taking him closer to uncovering the heart of a composition.

When he revisits the dark ‘We are Soldiers in the Army’ from his ‘Songs of Resistance’ album (2018), intoning it’s bleak refrain” We have to fight although we have to cry,”
Ribot doesn’t so much sing in the conventional sense as do a kind of heightened rhythmic speaking, a sort of Marc Ribot songspeil.

This is followed by brief noodling akin to elevator music (Ribot perhaps listening to his guitar and pondering what next?) but it’s quickly swept aside by a sharp turn into much more edgy material.

Next comes about seven minutes of delicate blues with a beguiling melody that’s sustained by Ribot throughout his exploration of it. There is a fragile beauty in how Ribot plays this, and it garners the most applause of the night thus far.

A centre piece is Ribot’s more chanted than sung delivery of a cascade of strange and sometimes disturbing images “...angel of grieving; angel of elbow, angel of bright, angel of terrible,....” with a sparse guitar framework, It is disturbing and baffling in equal measure. He then tells us the words which I wish I had written”, are a poem by Richard Siken,  ’ Several Tremendous’. Later I learn Siken wrote it while in the throes of trying to recover from a severe stroke, a fact which makes sense of the accumulation of scary imagery and underlines how well suited Ribot’s vocal style is to the poetics of Siken’s dire experience.

There ‘s a brief instance when Ribot’s guitar sounds like a banjo, and also moments when his playing reminds me of that of the late John Fahey (1939-2001) who blended the picking style of old American blues and folk with the dissonance of 20th century classical composers such as Bela Bartok.

For his encore Ribot initially turned to a standard, the name of which escapes me. After the applause died away, he said normally he would end with this. However after bemoaning the state of American politics, he turned to the Italian anti fascist anthem ‘Bella Ciao’ (Goodbye Beauty), that was sung also by left-wing MEPs to greet the visiting Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán in October 2024.

It is a rousing and passionate finale to a night that rewards close listening, and in which Ribot’s brief chats introduce a little levity into the near reverential atmosphere: he quips that someone from performing rights might be present causing him to possibly end up in gaol.

There’s been surprises, beauty and challenges and always it has been stimulating. It’s the first time I’d heard this master of the solo guitar, and I headed to the underground feeling it had been a privilege to be present, and with every intention to be present again for the next time Marc Ribot returns to play Cafe Oto.

Thank you to Peter Hall of Partisan PR for organising the ticket for me.

Marc Ribot’s ‘Map of a Blue City’ is out now and he will be touring it in the Autumn.
http://www.afeoto.co.uk/artists/marc-ribot/

His next London show with his quartet Hurry Red Telephone (w/Ava Mendoza, Sebastian Steinberg, Chad Taylor) - July 17 - Jazz Cafe
https://thejazzcafe.com/event/marc-ribot-quartet-hurry-red-telephone

COLIN MAY

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