Efrim Manuel Menuck and Tashi Dorji Present BLOOM AND RUIN

Tashi Dorji and Efrim Manuel Menuck are truly radical guitarists, not only for the way their work ignores traditional tunings and structures but also in the way it is meant to subvert systems, to suggest the possibility of revolution. More than three decades ago, Menuck—a destitute guy in his early 20s who had endured Zionist indoctrination and nervous breakdowns—founded Godspeed You! Black Emperor in Montreal, taking it on the road in a successful effort to connect to other despondent outcasts. Soon after moving to Western North Carolina from Bhutan to attend college, Dorji saw Godspeed and felt connected to a burgeoning network of musical radicals, folks living and working outside of traditional systems. During the last decade, Dorji, whose catalogue of recent solo guitar work is peerless, has often opened for Godspeed, becoming close friends with Menuck. Eventually, Menuck asked him if he might want to improvise.

Their 2026 debut, Bloom and Ruin—“Two Liberations,” is an exhausting and emancipatory sprawl, its two extended tracks of tangled electric guitars moving among suffocating drone, ecstatic clangor, and contemplative hum. At the start of the brilliantly titled opener, “Oppositional Greenery,” two amps howl at each other like participants in a struggle session, until they seem to resolve their differences and drift off in rhythmic and harmonic sync. Dorji’s partner, the artist Meredith Silver, starts the second side with a spoken-word piece, the guitars weaving neon spiderwebs across her words. Dorji has said that the partnership has taught him to pull more pedals into his own practice, while Menuck—an autodidact who has led one of the more consistently empowering rock bands of this century—has learned from Dorji’s extended and dizzying techniques. With a new LP in the offing, they reunite for a rare set at Big Ears 2027.