Nick Kuepfer

Nick Kuepfer is a guitar player who weaves nylon string and electric guitar pieces with live-sampled tape loops, recordings of animals, and drones from various sources. His predominantly wordless music ranges from subtle and static to frantic and abrasive, with a methodical, vigilant sense of experimentation guided by the search for consonance and dissonance with the sounds of "nature". He began performing solo, under his own name, in 2009 and occasionally invites guest players to join him.

Kuepfer recorded several hours worth of solo material on a field-recorder while traveling through rural Argentina in 2007-2008, assembling an audio scrapbook of guitar and percussion pieces along with environmental sound, he subsequently worked these into a finished album of sonic travelogue and audio collage called Avestruz, which was included in the first edition of the Musique Fragile series issued by Constellation Records in 2010.

Kuepfer has continued to work in this vein from his Montreal home base, recording to 1/4" 4-track in his practice space and to laptop on various excursions into the Quebec and Ontario hinterlands. He contributed a 20-minute EP to the Rural Route 3" CD series on Standard Form Records in February 2011.

Alongside his increasing activity as a solo performances, Nick also plays in Hrsta and No Nature. He has previously played in countless bands, including Lungbutter, Aids Wolf and L’Embuscade. Other notable recent activity includes participation in Rhys Chatham's Lincoln Center performance of A Crimson Grail for 200 electric guitars and the inclusion of material from Avestruz on the soundtrack for The Woods by filmmaker Matthew Lessner, alongside The Dirty Projectors, Sun Araw, Indian Jewelry and others.

Kuepfer was born and raised in Stratford, Ontario and has made Montreal his home since 2003.