Bill Orcutt is back with what might be the most beautiful record in his 21st-century guitar quartet series. Music in Continuous Motion (Palilalia, LP/CD) pointedly steps away from the cut-and-paste constructivism of Music for Four Guitars into a sonic stratum that's - as Tom Carter writes - "yearningly melodic, resolutely human, and built for performance." Four guitars, twelve tracks, most hovering around two-and-a-half minutes each. No waste. No fat. Pure music.

Where Music for Four Guitars operated with "discrete, mechanistic precision," here "each song weav[es] four gleaming threads into the warp and weft of an evolving, complex texture that employs simple, repeating motifs to build new melodies from counterpoint itself." The songs iterate "first the substrate, then the melody and its variations, then slamm[ing] shut like a clockwork music box." Efficient. Precise. Alive. The song titles, read in sequence, paint fleetingly-glimpsed forms - "Because sharp also smooth," "And warm to the touch," "Now nearly gone," "Yet always moving," "Impossible to reach." What ultimately sets this record apart is, in Carter's words, "its celebration of movement over immutability, of melody over form, of music as a hot wire to the heart rather than another upped ante in an arms race of inscrutability."

Recorded October & November 2025 at the Living Room, San Francisco. Mastered by James Plotkin. Essential listening.