Untight
Artist/musician Sam King’s project Untight was born in early 2019, at the final show of a venue he co-founded and co-ran for eight years in Fayetteville, AR. Untight combines the influence of composers and improvisers who ventured decidedly away from western intonation with a do-it-yourself ethic informed by King’s years booking and performing in bands in the northwest Arkansas region. The guitar is harnessed here in an anti-virtuosic stance: traditional rock/pop structures are eschewed, and individual motives accrue into orchestral ambience. King’s microtonal tuning introduces both purely intoned harmonies and bracing frictions, enabling his improvisations to unfold with paradoxically deliberate urgency.