Diego Caicedo - New Album of Compositions for Solo Guitar, Voice and String Quartet, Seis Amorfismos

Guitarist and composer Diego Caicedo, born in Colombia but working in Barcelona, steps nimbly between the worlds of jazz, avant-garde improvisation, noise, and metal. On Seis Amorfismos, he premieres a six-part work featuring his own highly distorted electric guitar, an extreme metal vocalist reciting poetry in hellish tones, and a string quartet. The album also includes three solo pieces that expand not only Caicedo’s own improvisatory vocabulary, but the musical world established by the first six tracks.

Music attracted Caicedo from a young age and metal attracted him much more. The  first vinyl he ever bought was Iron Maiden's Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son. From there many more followed: Voivod, Anthrax, Slayer, Metallica, Sodom, Celtic Frost. Upon entering university, Caicedo studied music theory, counterpoint, harmony, history, classical guitar, classical piano and jazz guitar. 

Focused on composition and orchestration, Caicedo studied with maestro Blas Emilio Atheortúa (1943-2020), who was a disciple of Alberto Ginastera (1916-1983) at the Torcuato Di Tella Institute, who studied with the great composers of the second half of the 20th century: Dallapicola, Maderna, Messiaen, Malipiero, Xenakis, and Copland. Caicedo participated in workshops with musicians from Barcelona who came to Colombia to teach the analysis method at Berklee and then traveled to Barcelona to study at L'aula Del Liceu. 

He stayed in Barcelona, where he has resided for 21 years. As part of the free improvisation scene, Caicedo works in a music school teaching guitar and theory. In addition to metal/extreme metal, Caicedo is passionate about the so-called "classical  music", jazz, free jazz and free musical improvisation. 

The Six Amorphisms (Seis Amorfismos) arose as an aesthetic exercise based on Caicedo’s passion for chamber music by great composers and his passion for extreme metal, and at the same time, as a matter/question: could a string quartet work with an electric guitar as a chamber quintet within an extreme metal (death/black) metal aesthetic? 

The main hurdle was the rhythmic aspect, how to replace the drums and how Caicedo could solve it with the quartet itself. Using rhythmic/technical aspects for the bowed strings provided an answer.

Caicedo devised the harmonic aspect based on the polyphonic composers from the 11th to the 15th century: Perotín, Leonin, Di Vitri, Machaut, Dufay, Dunstable, Des Pres,  Ockeghem, Willaert, Hildegard Von Bingen. The harmonic base arises from an  almost minimal material and how this material can be related to a group of 4 voices in  the form of polyphony/counterpoint with a harmonic/homophonic base. Another obstacle was in the relationship between the written/set music and the improvised parts. The Six Amorphisms are written for friends, great improvisers with whom we have worked on many projects over many years.