Elliott Sharp

Elliott Sharp (Cleveland, 1951) came to music as the guitarist and saxophonist of a blues band in Ithaca, New York, a group that would later evolve into Mofungo. Although he had studied the clarinet, the guitar remained his instrument of choice. Influenced by the electronic avant-garde and free jazz, he experimented with every conceivable mutation of the six-string guitar. He began composing in 1974 (with Attica Brothers, for electric string quartet and three percussionists), but he became a central figure of New York's Greenwich Village scene, especially after founding Ism in 1981 with Bill Laswell on bass and Charles Noyes on percussion.

Percussion is the only constant on Ism (october 1981 - Zoar, 1982). Each of the tracks offers a different line-up and a different take on improvisation/composition. Sharp plays against Art Baron's trombone and Olu Dara's cornet in Carbon and Irreversibility; but then duets with Bill Laswell's bass in Surdification and with Art Baron's trombone in Transient; Filter is a trio with Laswell on bass and Charles Noyes on percussion, but Just Like Here is a band piece with all of them (Baron, Dara, Laswell, Noyes).

Ism (Zoar, 1982) is one of the milestones of the movement. Orchestrated for guitar, bass, cornet, trombone, and a multitude of percussion instruments, it excels in pieces (such as Carbon) that display a tribal percussiveness interwoven with electronic reverberations and metallic cacophonies. It is music driven by an obsessive and collective pulse, in which the winds and the drums participate equally, all immersed in a crowd of African percussion instruments, over which rise the screams and grotesque noises of the electric instrumentation. Its most immediate reference point is primitive dance or the fanfare of village bands. The most hypnotic and relentless composition is Transient, whose wildly polyrhythmic layers support alternating minimalist phrases and free-jazz improvisations from the wind instruments, culminating in an epileptic crescendo: a kind of breakneck Sister Ray of the equatorial jungle. The most disjointed pieces, on the other hand, are Filter and Nots, studies in surreal cacophony.

During those years Sharp was open to every kind of experience: ethnic dance on the EP Free World, militant funk in History, acoustic experiments on the solo albums Resonance (December 1978) and Rhythms And Blues (February 1980), free and cacophonous improvisations in the live section of There (May 1983), especially Effector, the most anarchic, and Rinse Cycle, the most relentless; duets for atonal guitar and turntables (Christian Marclay) on the final two tracks of There, above all History; the performance piece Innosense (unreleased); and even a form of avant-garde hard rock on the album recorded with Michael Brown, I/S/M:R.

Rhythms And Blues (February 1980 - Zoar, 1980) collects ten solos performed on ten different instruments, from bass clarinet to soprano saxophone, each titled after the instrument itself, a remarkable feat of eclecticism. Anthony Braxton's influence is strong on Bass Clarinet, but Soprano Sax abandons structure in search of an almost plaintive emotional quality. The intricate, shrill metallic passages of Acoustic Guitar sound like country music from another universe, while Electric 12-string could be a wildly distorted tribute to Jimi Hendrix. But Fretless and several other pieces are simply chaotic for the sake of chaos.

Nots (Glass Records, 1982) is an anthology of Ism material, collecting rare and previously unreleased recordings.

A worthy continuation of the Ism project was the trio formed the following year with Lesli Dalaba on trumpet and Charles Noyes on percussion, devoted to tiny fragments of a surreal, cacophonous bebop (eight of them appear on (T)here). These are miniature chamber concerts in which the most extreme sounds of guitar and percussion blend with the evocative trumpet phrases to create dreamlike, fragmented harmonies (Calibrate) and provocatively abrasive textures (Cold Facts). They remain connected to jazz tradition (Body Barn, Crash Course), while preserving traces of Ism's tribalism (Rumble Strips, Calldump).

From this experience emerged the open ensemble Carbon, based on the same trio plus occasional percussionists who alternated between various instruments. Carbon (July 1984), their first release, is dominated by the most disarticulated chaos. Each piece is a nebulous cloud of discrete sounds that gains personality through a typical minimalist progression (the crooked fanfare of Iso) or through percussion capable of reaching sinister and horrifying levels of violence: the primitive, grotesque, explosive dance of Whose News (their unsurpassed masterpiece), the swamp-like cadence and cloud of noises of Helicopters, the guitar-mishap sarabande of Geometry, and the horror ritual of Inverse Proportions, with Lesli Dalaba's trumpet-siren in perpetual motion.

Carbon proclaimed the birth of a new musical genre, a sort of ethno-industrial free jazz, exemplified by the hypnotic tribalism of As Diversity Appears, with Dalaba's camouflaged trumpet and brutal crescendos intensified by arrangements that are equally barbaric and absurd. In subsequent years the ensemble's repertoire expanded with further chaotic sarabandes of industrial rhythms and free-jazz fanfares (CIA Pope), additional Eastern-style litanies with frantic funky detunings (Intervention), violently fragmented harmonic stammering (Squig on Fractal), horribly distorted mantras (Dusts on Fractal), and a long dissonant suite for ballet (Not Yet Time on Fractal (March 1986), featuring Bobby Previte on drums and James Staley on trombone).

The subsequent works instead explored the relationship between music and mathematics: the suite Marco Polo's Argali (February 1985 - Dossier, 1985), which in practice consists of a relentless and gratuitous "pounding" of bass drums, trombones, and guitars interspersed with dissonant trombone laments, all pushed toward Babel-like confusion through a dazzling succession of crescendos; hyper-distorted guitar aphorisms such as Diffractal (on Fractal); In C-style fanfares such as Alveoli; the duets between his guitar and Previte's drums on Virtual Stance (May 1987), especially the long title track composed for ballet, one of his first experiments with computers and samplers; the fantasy Sili/ Contemp/ Tation (1986), even more vehement and chaotic in its disordered percussive assault, torn apart by violent strikes of detuned guitar and every kind of wind-instrument noise; and other progressive cacophonies of the period such as Self-squared Dragon. These are uncontrolled avalanches of sound positioned halfway between Glenn Branca's walls of noise and free-jazz jams.

These works sought to function as a bridge between chaos (improvisation) and order (the geometry of fractals, the Fibonacci sequence, and so on). Sharp's guitar style, producing savage harmonics and disconnected polyrhythms, is supported by the obsessive drumming of Robert Previte.

The more accessible side of his experimentation also emerges on the album Semantics, recorded as a trio with drummer Sam Bennett and saxophonist Ned Rothenberg. The album reveals ethnic-ritualistic tendencies (Hole In The Pocket) within the framework of a "Beefheartian" primitivism (Vliet's Van), while its follow-up, Bone Of Contention, is an orgiastic heavy-metal jazz built on demented riffs (R-Byte Mock Fry), grotesque funk cadences (Shredded), and primordial blues-like catalepsy (Addressee Unknown, Big Sleep).

At the same time, however, Sharp continued to pursue his occult rituals: Tessalation Row, a quartet of extreme sonic intensity and violent atonality, is another learned compendium of his cannibalistic experiments with string instruments and sounds distorted by microphones. Tessalation Row is actually the string-quartet version (Sharp does not perform on it) of a larger suite, Re/Iterations, which applies a compositional method based on the Fibonacci series to a string orchestra, while two percussionists (Bobby Previte and Charles Noyes) and a bass player (Sharp himself) improvise freely in harmony with the music generated in this way.

More accessible is the satirical In The Land Of The Yahoos, still indebted to African influences. Free Society is free jazz updated with primitive tribalism, psychedelic distortions, and the harmonic fractures of rap; Gulagogo is a simple percussive ballet; Ratnap is a more obsessive rhythmic sketch; and Fundamentia is an Eastern lament built on frantic and deafening polyrhythms. Even the most difficult and completely unintelligible experiments, such as the tape sonata L-L-Love (with Marclay on turntables), the expressionistic dissonances of Ras/Ten, and the electronically processed voices (Shelley Hirsh) of Ornament And Crime, display the concise proportions and harmonic unity of the song form.

The masterpiece of this period is perhaps Larynx (SST, 1987 - Neos, 2008), a six-part suite (Sharp, Previte, Bennett, Noyes, a string quartet, David Fulton on trombone, Lesli Dalaba on trumpet, and a trombone trio) inspired by the vocal music of Inuit and Mongolian traditions. It opens and closes with two percussive hurricanes (with four drummers involved) and contains one of the most grotesque examples of dissonant jazz ever recorded (the second movement, featuring drunken saxophones, trumpet laughter, guitar gurgles, and completely random drum attacks) as well as one of the most evocative cacophonous slapstick pieces (the fourth movement, with Dalaba's minimalist trumpet and Sharp's viciously wrong notes amid the convulsive noise-making of Noyes and Previte).

In 1988, another one of his "serious" works was premiered: the string quartet Hammer, Anvil, Stirrup, in which the musicians are required to use a basic melody and rhythm as the foundation for a series of operations, including several free improvisations.

Hammer, Anvil, Stirrup (SST, 1989) combines Tessalation Row with two versions of Hammer, Anvil, Stirrup.

Sharp, who in the meantime continued to produce and arrange records by Mofungo, is a typical representative of the Manhattan loft culture. Raised on free jazz, minimalism, and ethnic music, he attempted to fuse that formidable body of influences into a new avant-garde music. In doing so, he realized that he had to reconcile order and disorder, and from this contradiction emerged one of the most schizophrenic research programs of the era. In practice, there is not a single Elliott Sharp, but at least two: the demanding post-serial experimenter and the creative soloist devoted to postmodern jams.

Monster Curve (SST, 1988) is an anthology of Fractal, Marco Polo's Argali and Carbon. Sili/Contemp/Tation (Dossier, 1989) is another anthology of the same albums, focusing on the longer tracks: Marco Polo's Argali and Sili/Contemp/Tation.

Free improviser, minimalist composer, noise sculptor, new-wave guitarist and prog-rocker, Elliott Sharp entered the last decade of the century at the peak of his multi-faceted talent.

Looppool (august 1987 - Ear Rational, 1988) was an ambitious solo album. Sharp opted for computer, sampler and drum machine, but his music did not change all that much. It includes a 20-minute version of Virtual Stance.

Bootstrappers (New Alliance, 1989) was a trio with George Hurley on drums and Mike Watt on bass (basically Sharp and the Minutemen's rhythm section). The Bootstrappers' second album, Gi=Go (Atonal, 1992), mainly devoted to the suite Garbage In = Garbage Out, had replaced the rhythm section with Jan Kotik and Thom Kotik.

Sharp reformed Carbon with Samm Bennett on percussion and samples, David Linton on drums, and Zeena Parkins on harp and keyboard to record Datacide (march 1989 - Enemy, 1990), an album that, abandoning the cacophonous aesthetic of the 1980s, bordered on industrial music and on death-metal. Even better, Tocsin (september 1991 - Enemy, 1991) retained Parkins, but the rest of the line-up was new (bassist Marc Sloan, percussionist Joseph Trump, David Weinstein on sampler) and the program was only instrumental. Carbon remained his "rock'n'roll" alter-ego, that indulged in brief, frantic vignettes running the gamut from punk-jazz to funk-blues. Both records are vibrant, eclectic, acrobatic and reckless.

K!L!A!V! (Newport Classic, 1990) was an eccentric recording, entirely devoted to keyboard instruments: the 22-minute keyboards orgy Twenty Below for keyboard sextet (Anthony Coleman on toy piano and organ, Wayne Horvitz and Zeena Parkins on electronic keyboards, a reed organ and two musicians on samplers), the six-part suite K!L!A!V! for computer and sampler (both operated by Sharp himself), and the 21-minute piano solo Mapping.

Twistmap (june 1991) contains two pieces for string quartet (the 11-minute Twistmap and the 8-minute Shapeshifters), the 19-minute Ferrous for percussions and "violinoid", and the 10-minute String Of Strings for samples.

Beneath The Valley of The Ultra-Yahoos (Sulphur/Silent, 1992), another satire on the USA lifestyle, features Sharp leading on different instruments (on guitar, bass, sampler, voice, saxophone, computer, drum machine, and even mandolin) in different combinations with drummer Bennett, Anthony Coleman's organ and various vocalists. Just like its predecessor In The Land Of The Yahoos, this is pop music compared with his most "scientific" work.

Orchestra Carbon's Abstract Repressionism 1990-99 (april 1992 - Victor, 1993) is an atonal chamber orchestra suite including three lengthy compositions (Adventures In The Skintrade, X-Tactic, Dystopia Exit) as well as shorter pieces. This "orchestral" work is a very rhythmic mix of jazz, classical and minimalism, something halfway between Anthony Braxton, Iannis Xenakis and Glenn Branca.

Carbon's Truthtable (september 1992 - Homestead, 1993) was Parkins, Trump, Marc Sloan on bass, David Weinstein on sampler and Sharp on sampler, computer, guitars. Sharp's distorted vocals were the album's main drawback, making it sound like a cheap imitation of industrial metal. Carbon's Amusia (Spectrum, 1994) was divided between solo Sharp tracks and group tracks Parkins, Sloan, Trump, Weinstein). Both albums sounded transitional and insecure: not as terrifying as the early ones, and not fully "something else" yet. Dispensing with the annoying vocals, the same quintet recorded the all-instrumental Interference (Atavistic, 1995), which finally moved towards a more abstract and dilated sound (Onyx, Jungle Freeze, the eleven-minute Thermal) despite the usual fits of neurosis (Slag).

Cryptid Fragments (Extreme, 1993) contains two wildly dissonant suites (Shapeshifters, Twistmap) performed by the Soldier String Quartet, the four-part Cryptid Fragments for cello, violin and computer (the computer distorting the timbres of the instruments and completely rearranging the sequencing), and Umbra for cello and sampler (the sampler producing a wealth of instrumental voices that storm the cello lines).

Westwerk (Ear-Rational, 1993) documented a solo (and relatively subdued, by his standards) concert by Sharp, performing the 14-minute Temblor, the 14-minute Rods And Cones, the 35-minute Histogram (on doubleneck guitarbass, soprano, voice).

Psycho-Acoustic (Victo, 1994) and especially Blackburst (august 1995 - Victo, 1996), that contains the 25-minute Peregrine, were duos with Parkins.

Terraplane (Homestead, 1994) was his tribute to classic blues.

Dyners Club (december 1993 - Intakt, 1994) contains Sharp's guitar improvisations over the composed music of a guitar trio.

Boodlers (Cavity Search, 1995) was a live performance with bassist Fred Chalenor and drummer Henry Franzoni, delivering terrific playing and inspired lengthy counterpoint (Acid-Jazz Payback, Buckshot, Cambionics, Boodlerama). The trio would deliver a less inspired follow-up, Counter Fit (Tim/Kerr, 1997).

A number of minor works followed. Philorene (organico, 1995) was a collaboration with David Barratt on sampler. Chipfarm (God Mountain, 1995) was a collaboration among Optical-8 (a Japanese quartet led by Hoppy Kamiyama on electronics and samples, and Otomo Yoshihide on guitar and turntables), Japanese rockers Melt Banana, and Zeena Parkins. Hoosegow's Mighty (Homestead, 1996) was a collaboration with vocalist Queen Esther, and, de facto, another tribute to the blues. Xenocodex (Tzadik, 1996) was a collaboration between Sharp (on guitar and clarinet) and the Soldier String Quartet on two of Sharp's electroacoustic compositions, the 19-minute X-Topia and the 29-minute Intifada, both obtained by processing in real-time the sound of the instruments. Figure Ground (Tzadik, 1997) collects soundtracks for films and installations: The Salt Mines (1988), Dreaming out Loud (1990), Daddy and the Muscle Academy (1991), Prey (1996). Spring & Neap (october 1996 - Zoar, 1997) documents a live performance of a Sharp composition performed by Zeena Parkins on harp, Makoto Nomura on piano, Michiyo Yagi on koto, Yumiko Tanaka on shamisen, Yoshiko Fujio on shamisen, Tamiki Sawa and Mio Abe on violins, Hiromichi Sakamoto and Kota Miki on cellos, Hiroaki Mizutani and Masaaki Kikuchi on contrabasses, Guam Kumada and Kenji Ito on percussions. Revenge of The Stuttering Child (Tzadik, 1997) is a collaboration with narrator Ronny Someck. Improvisations (november 1996 - JDK, 1998) is a collaboration with cellist Frances-Marie Uitti. 97 Is 97 (december 1997, released only 14 years later) features Christian Marclay on turntables & electronics and Elliott Sharp on 8-string guitarbass, bass clarinet & electronics. Downtown Lullaby (Depth Of Field, 1998) is a collaboration with Wayne Horvitz, John Zorn and Bobby Previte, Rwong Territory (april 1998 - Cavity Search, 1998) documents a live performance with DJ Soulslinger. GTR OBLQ (Knitting Factory, 1998) was a guitar trio with Living Colors' Vernon Reid and David Torn.

Tectonics (february 1994 - Atonal, 1995) was mostly solo experiments, with an increased role for electronics and electronic grooves: it ended up sounding like the fusion between jazz and drum'n'bass that disc-jockeys around the world were pursuing, but from the perspective of the free improviser. It became a stand-alone project (Tectonics) on Field And Stream (december 1996 - Atonal, 1997), with compositions ever more futuristic and syncopated (Glimpse Of Field Effect, Fzarp, Anatomic Dub, etc), and Errata (september 1998 - Knitting Factory, 1999 - Neos, 2008).

Sferics (november 1985 - Atonal, 1996) delivered five solo guitar tracks (Source Taproot, Event Horizon, Oscuro, Teak, Clarify) and shorter pieces in the vein of Sonny Sharrock.

Arc 1, Arc 2 and Arc 3 (Atavistic, 1998) are career retrospectives.

Other compositions of this period include: the interactive audio installations Tag (1997) and Chromatine (2001), and Fluvial (2002).

SyndaKit (Neos, 2008), composed in 1998 for the Orchestra Carbon (Sharp on guitar, Judith Insell on viola, Rea Mochiach on percussion, Zeena Parkins on electric harp, Jim Pugliese on percussion, Ted Reichman on accordion, Marc Sloan on electric bass, Tim Smith on bass clarinet, David Soldier on violin, Evan Spritzer on bass clarinet, Joseph Trump on percussion, David Weinstein on synthesizer and sampler), is a 66-minute game-driven composition: "a transformative organism consisting of 144 composed cores on 12 sheets divided among the 12 players with a set of simple rules for their use through processes of imitation, addition, recombination, transposition, and mutation... based on the activities of flocking birds, African drum choirs, cellular automata, hunting packs, and recombinant amino acids".

Blues For Next (Knitting Factory, 2000) and Do The Don't (2004) continued the blues experiment of Terraplane.

Acoustiphobia Vol 1 (Sublingual, 2001) is a live improvisation among Ikue Mori, Christian Marclay and Elliott Sharp.

Anostalgia (Gross, 2002) and Feuchtify (2006) were collaborations with pianist Reinhold Friedl.

Prisoner's Dilemma (Gross, 2003) was a collaboration with Previte.

String Quartets - 1986-1996 (Tzadik, 2003) collects all the music for string quartet, including Digital (1986), Tessalation Row (1986), Hammer/Anvil/Stirrup (1988), Lumen (1996).

Suspension Of Disbelief (recorded between july 1998 and july 2000) was a solo album on which Sharp played guitar, clarinet, saxophone, zither, bass, synthesizer and computers.

Beyond (2000) was a live collaboration with Italian guitarist Roberto Zorzi and drummer Joey Baron.

Radio Hyper-Yahoo (2004) was another satire of the American way of life.

The Velocity of Hue (Emanem, 2004) is a solo acoustic guitar album, a wild excursion through the sounds of blues, heavy-metal, post-rock, free-jazz and Ry Cooder. The experimented was continued on Quadrature - Solo Electroacoustic Guitar (2005).

Tongue (All Questions, 2004), a collaboration between John Duncan and Elliott Sharp, is musique concrete with a soul, as the two manipulate and reprocess sounds produced by their mouths (hard to describe them as merely "human voice").

Tranz (2005) was a collaboration with Merzbow.

Terraplane (Alex Harding on baritone saxophone, Curtis Fowlkes on trombone, David Hofstra on bass, Lance Carter on drums) became the name of his horns-driven blues band, the blues equivalent of Carbon. They debuted with Secret Life (Intuition, 2007), that mixed roadhouse sound with guitar dissonance. Its follow-up, Forgery (Intuition, 2007), featured vocalist Eric Mingus (Charles' son), poet Tracy Morris, trombonist Curtis Fowlkes, bassist Dave Hofstra and drummer Tony Lewis on a set of songs that often celebrate contemporary events such as the Iraqi war and the Katrina hurricane. The horns steal the show in the drunk marching-band anthem Juke.

Sharp returned to the acoustic guitar for an interpretation of of Thelonious Monk tunes on Sharp? Monk? Sharp! Monk! (2006).

Pi:k (september 2005) collects duets with viola player Charlotte Hug.

Concert in Dachau (may 2007) documents solo performances for guitar and/or laptop.

Octal - The Book One (august 2007 - Clean Feed) collects works for eight-string electroacustic guitarbass. Base (recorded in 2008) collects guitar duets with Antoine Berthiaume. Protoplastic (september 2008) collects duets with Boris Savoldelli (on vocals and electronics).

War Zones (october 2007) features Nevada Diggs (on vocals), Philip Jeck (on turntables), Hans Koch (on reeds), Fredy Studer (on drums) and Bernhard Lang (on keyboards and electronics) performing Paranoia, an excerpt of his theatre work Der Alte vom Berge, and Ripples from the Bang, mostly improvised with pre-prepared electronic sound files.

Sharp played eight-string guitarbass, guitar and soprano sax on Carbon's Void Coordinates (july 2009 - Intakt, 2010), recorded live with Zeena Parkins (electric harp), Marc Sloan (electric and prepared bass), Joseph Trump (drums) and David Weinstein (sampler and synthesizer).

Abstraction Distraction (august 2008) contained pieces for soprano and tenor saxes processed via analog and digital electronics, with drum programming and computer processing by Joseph Trump, Sim Cain and Tony Lewis.

Carbon's Transmigration At The Solar Max (august 2009) is simply a live performance with Zeena Parkins (electric harp) and Bobby Previte (drums)

About Us (2010) is a science-fiction opera for teenage performers.

Binibon (Henceforth, 2010) is an "opera" with a libretto by Jack Womack about a murder. The album is too "spoken" to qualify as a work of art. Sharp's music basically plays the role of a soundtrack. His occasional incursions in free jazz (The Scene), acid-rock (Susie and Johnny) and musique concrete <(i>Murder and) are merely commentaries.

Reflexions (Idiolect, 2010) was a collaboration with Michiyo Yagi. Octal Book Two (Clean Feed, 2010) collected more works for eight-string electroacustic guitarbass. Electric Willie (Yellowbird, 2010) was a tribute to Willie Dixon. Snowplow (march 2010) documents a collaboration between Andrea Centazzo and guitarist Elliott Sharp. Canephora (Nuun, 2011) was a collaboration with bass clarinetist Gareth Davis.

Sharp' Orchestra Carbon, featuring Ned Rothenberg (reeds), Steve Swell (trombone), Zeena Parkins, David Weinstein and Jim Pugliese (samplers), released the live Radiolaria (march 2001). Terraplane released Yellowman: A Play (january 2011) for the theater, and then Sky Road Songs (november 2011), on which the leader played mandocello, guitar & electronics flanked by Joe Mardin (vocals, drums, bass & chank guitar), Tracie Morris & Eric Mingus (vocals), Curtis Fowlkes (trombone), Alex Harding (baritone sax), Dave Hofstra (bass), Don McKenzie (drums) and 80-year old electric guitarist and blues legend Hubert Sumlin.

Cut with Occam's Razor (2012) collects Boreal (2009) for string quartet, Oligosono for solo piano (2004) and the double quartet Occam's Razor.

Aggregat (july 2011 - Clean Feed, 2012) collects various minor vignettes for trio (with bassist Brad Jones and drummer Ches Smith) in which Sharp mostly plays saxophones.

Open The Door (Public Eyesore) documents a 1999 collaboration between guitarists Nels Cline and Elliott Sharp (plus a live recording of 2007). Duo Milano (april 2006) documents more guitar duets between Cline and Sharp.

Payton Peter Elliott (2012) collects improvisations by Peter Evans, Payton MacDonald and Elliott Sharp.

Momentum Anomaly (New Atlantis, 2012), originally premiered in may 2007, was a 60-minute acoustic guitar solo performed using an e-bow, the follow-up to Velocity of Hue and Quadrature.

Crossing the Waters (Intakt, 2013) documents the first studio recording (march 2012) by the trio of Elliott Sharp (guitar), Melvin Gibbs (bass) and Lucas Niggli (drums).

Haptikon (Long Song, 2013) collects computer-enhanced pieces for electric-guitar pieces.

Aggregat came back with Quintet (2013), on which Sharp played tenor and soprano saxes and bass clarinet along with Nate Wooley (trumpet), Terry Green (trombone), Brad Jones (bass) and Ches Smith (drums). Sharp's Incident collects music for cinema and theater.

The eleven-part suite In The Pelagic Zone (Jazzwerkstatt, 2013), recorded in november 2011, was composed for a a 14-piece chamber group consisting of a string quartet, brass, reeds, two percussionists, piano, guitar, contrabass, and electronics.

Ostryepolya (Not Two, 2013) documents two live performances by the acoustic guitar duo of Elliott Sharp and Scott Fields (may 2009 and march 2010).

Momentum Anomaly (august 2012) contains five solo acoustic e-bow guitar compositions, a follow-up of sorts to Velocity Of Hue and Quadrature.

This prolific stage of his career also yielded the algorithmic score Flexagons (2011), Storm Of The Eye (2012) for solo violin, Turing Test (2012), Oneirika (2012), Persistence of Vision (2012), the suite Tribute MLK Berlin '64 (2014), the opera Port Bou (2014), and the string quartets Tranzience (2013), Mare Undarum (2013) and Akheron (2014).

Akra Kampo (july 2014) contains duets with fellow guitarist Scott Fields.

Tranzience (New World, 2016) collects four compositions recorded in different years: the 28-minute Tranzience (2013), which is another string quartet; the ten-minute Approaching The Arches Of Corti (1997), which is a sax quartet; the nine-minute Homage Leroy Jenkins (2008) for clarinet, violin and piano; and the 12-minute Venus & Jupiter (2012) for chamber ensemble.

Aggregat's Dialectrical (february 2016), again featuring Sharp on saxes and clarinets, boasted the new lineup of Taylor Ho Bynum (trumpet), Brad Jones (bass), Terry Green (trombone) and Barry Altschul (drums).

Boreal (Starkland, 2016) collects solo, chamber and orchestral music. The four-movement Boreal (2009) is scored for string quartet equipped with custom bows swings between clownish whining and perverted jarring noise with sudden minimalist orgasms, and achieves its peak of pathos with the whispered pizzicato of the fourth movement. Oligosono (2004) for solo prepared piano exhibits a swinging geometry as well as metronomic riffing and driving crescendoes that create the effect of endless mirror reflections (especially the second movement, which is a sort of allegro). Proof of Erdos (2006) for orchestra is yet another excursion by Sharp in the world of number theory and nonetheless capable of yielding emotional moments such as the gentle cacophony of the first movement and the twisted waltz of the second. On Corlear's Hook (2007) for orchestra is the rare pictorial composition in Sharp's canon. The tense chirping morphs into the massive dramatic suspenseful drones of the second with its thundering crescendo, and the breezy harp-like fluttering of the third movement flows into the loud ferociously grotesque disorder of the fourth one.

Tectonics' Fourth Blood Moon (Yellowbird, 2016) was actually a duo with vocalist Eric Mingus. Nostalgia For Infinity (Fractal, 2017) collects six guitar solos, notably the 17-minute Nostalgia For Infinity, the 18-minute The Ice Wall At New Harbor and the 16-minute Just Guessing Again. The live Oceanus Procellarum (november 2016 - Cavity Search, 2017) featured Gareth Davis on bass clarinet and the German 12-piece string ensemble Resonanz.

The guitar trio of Elliott Sharp, Mary Halvorson and Marc Ribot recorded Err Guitar (july 2016).

Chansons Du Crepuscule (may 2014) documents a collaboration between guitarist Elliott Sharp and French harpist and vocalist Helene Breschand.

Rub Out The Word (april 2014) documents a live performance by Elliott Sharp (as usual on guitar and electronics) and film actor Steve Buscemi reciting William Burroughs texts.

Dispersion (july 2015), a collaboration with Slovak ensemble Veni Academy, contains music driven by algorithms: The Dispersion of Seeds (composed in 2003), Flexagons, and The Hidden Variable.

Calling All Earthlings (Cavity Search, 2018) is a solo album that contains 19 brief pieces (for acoustic & electric guitars, tenor & bari guitars, steel guitar, mandocello, bass, synths and voice) composed for the soundtrack of a Jonathan Berman documentary.

Elliott Sharp on mandoncello recorded Blues, Hues, & Views (december 2018) with accordionist William Schimmel.

Elliott Sharp (on electro-acoustic bass clarinet, electric guitar & electronics), collaborated with Alvaro Domene (seven string electric guitar) and Mike Caratti (drums & percussion) for Expressed By The Circumference (january 2019).

Syzygy (october 2018), with Giancarlo Schiaffini on trombone, Walter Prati on electric cello, Gak Sato on theremin, Sergio Armaroli on vibes, Francesca Gemmo on piano and Steve Piccolo on bass & objects, was an experiment in combinatorial composition, documented both in studio and live.

Oslo (january 2018) was a collaboration with double-bassist John Andrew Wilhite Hannisdal. The three compositions of Plastovy Hrad (march 2018) featured the Brno Contemporary Orchestra.

Saalfelden (august 1998) documents a 57-minute live improvisation by Graham Haynes (cornet), Elliott Sharp (guitar, and bass clarinet) and Jack DeJohnette (piano, drums, congas).

Marmara Sea (february 1999) was a collaboration with vocalist Saadet Turkoz, bassist Joelle Leandre, cellist Martin Schutz and oud player Burhan Ocal.

Sharp (now playing 8-string guitar, Buchla synth, drum machine and Baschet percussion) formed the Clinamen, first documented on the live Swervitude (august 2017), with John Edwards (bass) and Mark Sanders (percussion and vibraphone).

Sharp played synthesizer, bass clarinet and glissentar on Kumuska (recorded in 2007 and released 12 years later), a collaboration with poet and vocalist Saadet Turkoz.

Peregrinations (Zoar, 2019) document a second collaboration with cellist Frances-Marie Uitti.

Spilla (june 2018) documents a live performance and a computer-based collaboration with fellow guitarist Sergio Sorrentino.

Phonon, formed by Sharp and Alvaro Domene with bassist Colin Marston and drummer Weasel Walter, recorded Alloy (july 2019).

Sharp played all instruments on Terraplane's Kick It Six (september 2019): electric guitars, lap steel & console steel guitars, mandola, mandocello, basses and drum programming.

Sharp played guitar, soprano sax & computer on Blue In Mind (november 2019) with Steve Piccolo on vocals and Sergio Armaroli on vibes. The same trio recorded What Went Wrong (october 2021).

The double-disc set Filiseti Mekidesi (Infrequents Seams, 2020) documents an Sharp’s opera premiered in september 2018, based on texts by poets Tracie Morris and Edwin Torres, as performed by the Ensemble Musikfabrik (flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, trumpet, trombone, tuba, keyboards, drums, contrabass, viola, violin and cello) and vocal group Voxnova Italia. Besotted (april 2021) collect duets between Charles Noyes on electric guitar and Elliott Sharp on analog synths, soprano sax, bass clarinet, triple-course bass pantar and arches h-line. The solo Phlogiston (april 2021) contains four compositions for synthesizers.

The Bootstrappers' third album Xenolith (Klanggalerie, 2021) featured Melvin Gibbs on electric bass and Don McKenzie on drums.

SysOrk - ReGenerate (march 2021), containing the 29-minute ReGenerate, was performed by a midsize ensemble: Lea Bertucci on alto sax, Nate Wooley on trumpet, Chris McIntyre and Terry Greene on trombones, Margaret Lancaster on flute, Rachel Golub on violin, Judith Insell on viola, Shayna Dulberger and James Ilgenfritz on contrabasses, Payton MacDonald on marima, Danny Tunick on percussion and vibes and Weasel Walter on drums.

Sakuraza (april 2021) documents a live collaboration between Jim O'Rourke (synthesizers and electronics) and Elliott Sharp (bass clarinet, Strandberg Boden 8-string guitarbass, electronics). Kompromat (may 2021) contains improvisations with Tim Dahl (bass) and Weasel Walter (drums).

Songs From A Rogue State (september 2022) features Sharp (on electric, 12-string, baritone & console steel guitars, electric & 8-string basses, analogue synth & drum programming), Don McKenzie (on drum samples & loops) and Eric Mingus (on vocals and electric bass).

Sharp was composer, conductor, librettist, and personally played synth, bass and percussion on the double-disc Die Grosste Fuge (september 2021), assisted by vocalist Nicholas Isherwood and the Asasello String Quartet, an ambitious work inspired by Beethoven's famous string quartet.

Aube (august 2020) and L’Apres-Midi D'Un Bot (june 2022) were two more collaborations with harpist Helene Breschand.

The double-disc A Tribute to Iannis Xenakis (Erototox, 2023) contains renditions of Xenakis compositions, recorded by each musician at home during the covid pandemic. The performers are credited as the quartet Stochastica: Elliott Sharp (electric, 12-string, steel & fretless baritone guitars, electric sitar, electric mandocello, bass clarinet & analog synth), Henry Kaiser (electric & acoustic guitars & 6-string bass), Brandon Lopez (contrabass, baritone guitar & electric mandocello) and Scott Amendola (drums, percussions & electronics).

Topical Anesthetic (july 2022) documents duets with digital musician Zona Zanjeros.

Sharp played electric, 12 string, baritone and console steel guitars, electric and 8 string basses, analog synthesizers, and drum programming on Songs From A Rogue State (september 2022), accompanied by Eric Mingus (voice, vocal arrangements, electric upright and electric basses) and Don McKenzie (drum samples, loops).

The nine pieces of disPOSSESSION (zOaR, 2023), recorded in various dates in three different sessions, feature Elliott Sharp on electric guitar, soprano sax, synths & drum programs, Hélène Breschand on electric & acoustic harps & voice, Zafer Tawil on oud, violin & percussion & Flao Krouchi on electric bass, and Don Mackenzie on drum samples.

Sharp also played guitars, steel guitar, ghita phim lom, electric mandola, electric mandocello, basses, synthesizers, drum programming and arrangements in The Collapsed Wave (august 2023), performed along with Don McKenzie on drums & drum samples. The nine pieces he composed are a tribute to great disappeared guitarists: Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, John McLaughlin, Sonny Sharrock.

Occam’s Machete (october 2023), scored for ten violins, five violas, four cellos and four contrebasses, contains "algorithmic compositions".

Arbor (august 2023) is an album of solo acoustic guitar manipulated "with metal oscillators and digital manipulation".

The live Void Patrol (may 2023) documents a concert with Sharp on electric guitar and electronics, Colin Stetson (various saxes), Billy Martin (drums and percussion) and Payton MacDonald (marimba, vibraphone and xilophone).

The guitar trio of Elliott Sharp, Sally Gates and Tashi Dorji recorded Ere Guitar (july 2023).

Mandocello (july 2024) contains solos for mandocello (acoustic and electric).

Mandorle (july 2024) contains solos played on a variety of acoustic and electric mandolins.

Hudson River Compositions 1973-74 (october 2024) contains a a collage of old compositions recorded for the first time with him playing clarinets, saxes, mandolin, electric & baritone guitars & electronics, accompanied by a variety of musicians (Nate Wooley on trumpet, Terry L. Greene II on trombone, Sara Salomon on violin, Judith Insell on viola, Hao Jiang on cello, Anthony Coleman on piano, Shayna Dulberger on bass, Don McKenzie on drums).

Reimsi Geara (august 2023) contains duets on electric guitars by Elliott Sharp and Scott Fields.

The guitar duo of Joe Morris and Elliott Sharp recorded Realism (july 2023), the rare guitar duet that succeeds (notably the 16-minute Arrokoth).

JEM3, which debuted on Apices (july 2023), consisted of Elliott Sharp (Strandberg Boden 8-string guitar, guitarbass, bass clarinet & electronics), Marco Cappelli (classical & electric guitars & electronics) and JT Lewis (drums & percussion).

Terraplane returned with Livin' Hear (august 2023), featuring the leader on guitars, tenor sax, keyboards, bass & synths, Eric Mingus (the son of Charles) on vocals, Microscopic Septet’s Dave Hofstra on bass and Don McKenzie on drums. The music was composed by Sharp and Mingus. Mare Crisium (august 2025) documents an electric guitar sextet featuring Sally Gates, Gian Perez, Angela Babin, Matteo Liberatore and Kevin Ramsay.

Hi-Gengo (august 2024) documents a collaboration with vocalist Ayako Kanda.

Sharp played guitars and soprano sax on the double-disc Imaginary Songbook (september 2023), flanked by Sergio Armaroli (vibraphone) and Steve Piccolo (electric bass, voices and electronics).

Uhhuu (june 2025), which included the 15-minute Bug Reports, documents a collaboration between Elliott Sharp (playing electric, baritone & 12-string guitars & drum programming) and Rainer Jancis (on electric, fretless & 7 string guitars, drums & electronics) with guests Rob Heath (drums) and Tuulikki Bartosik (accordion).

The duo of Elliott Sharp (electric guitars, baritone guitar, electric bass, analog synthesizers, drum programming) and vocalist Eric Mingus recorded Wrench In The Works (november 2025).

Triacontagon (october 2024) contains improvisations with saxophonist Ivo Perelman (8-string electric guitar) and Cyro Baptista (percussion and vocals).

Piano Forte (march 2026) contains piano solos performed on a Steinway B.

Elliott Sharp (guitar, soprano sax), Sergio Armaroli (vibraphone), Tony Buck (drums), Francesca Gemmo (piano), Magda Mayas (prepared piano) and Steve Piccolo (electronics, vocals) formed the Verona Sextet that debuted with Leaps And Bounds (october 2024).

A live improvisation by the guitar trio of Loren Connors, Elliott Sharp and Michael Vallera is documented on When The Moon Is New (october 2025).

Sharp performed Octal: -Book Five For 8-String Guitarbass (may 2026) on his 8-string fanned-fret guitarbass built by Saul Koll in 2013.