Myles Boisen

Myles Boisen (born October 19, 1956)^[1] is an American guitarist, composer, record producer and sound engineer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He was a member of several bands, including Splatter Trio and the Club Foot Orchestra, and has collaborated with a number of musicians, including Fred Frith, John Zorn and Henry Kaiser.^[2] Boisen has also released four solo albums.^[1]

Boisen is the owner and lead engineer of the Guerrilla Recording studio and the Headless Buddha Mastering Lab in Oakland, California.^[1] He has recorded, mastered and produced over 150 recordings by groups and musicians.^[3] Boisen has been described as a "beyond-jazz pioneer",^[4] and his music, "unheard of", "highly flammable",^[5] and "scary, noisy, and dense".^[3]

Biography

Boisen was born in Omaha, Nebraska on October 19, 1956.^[1] He was raised in Seattle, Washington, and has since moved to Berkeley, California.^[6] He obtained a BA degree in 1979 in 20th-Century Media and Contemporary Art from Fairhaven College at Western Washington University.^[7]

Boisen's music is primarily avant-garde jazz, experimental and free improvisation, often using prepared guitars. He plays a custom-built double-neck guitar and bass, with a Gibson SG-shaped body and necks.^[6] In 1980, Boisen studied with Robert Fripp in London, and remarked that he "still retain[s] much of [Fripp's] approach, specifically the use of left-hand exercises based on classical technique and the importance of equal facility with all four fingers". Boisen also stated that his performances with Fred Frith have influenced his own playing, specifically the way he prepares his guitars using found objects.^[6]

In the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, Boisen was a member of the West Coast experimental music group, Splatter Trio, where Boisen played guitar and bass guitar, Dave Barrett played saxophone, and Gino Robair played drums. The trio was formed in 1987 by Barrett after he watched Boisen and Robair performing in John Zorn's Cobra. The group recorded five albums before splitting up in 1995.^[8] In the early 1990s, Boisen co-produced the Bay Area Improvised Music Festival held annually at Berkeley, California.^[2]

During the 1990s, Boisen was a member of the Club Foot Orchestra, where he was composer and played bass guitar. The ensemble created silent film scores for, amongst others, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, G. W. Pabst's Pandora's Box and Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr..^[9] The Club Foot Orchestra's recording of Sherlock Jr.'s soundtrack was produced by Boisen, and was used on the film's commercial video release by Kino Lorber in 2024. Boisen and the Club Foot Orchestra scored and recorded the soundtrack for the first season of Film Roman's The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat. In the late 1990s, Boisen became musical director of the Orchestra Nostalgico, an offshoot of the Club Foot Orchestra established to perform live film music.^[10]

Boisen also composed soundtrack music for MTV, CBS, and played guitar on the soundtrack of David Lynch's film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.^[1][11] Boisen was the sound engineer on The Gorey End by the Tiger Lillies with the Kronos Quartet, which received a 2004 Grammy Award.^[12][13] His production of the CD release of Born to Sing the Blues by Clarence Sims received "Best West Coast blues reissue" and "Best studio sound technique" awards in 1999 from Real Blues Magazine.^[10]

As a journalist, Boisen has made contributions to the SF Weekly newspaper, the Down Home Guide to the Blues book, and is the Roots and Rhythm magazine record review editor.^[7] He has also written over 40 articles on electronic equipment for Electronic Musician.^[1][14]

Discography

References

External links

• Official website
• Myles Boisen on Bandcamp
• Myles Boisen discography at Discogs