Michael Garfield's Music
"Welcome to the future...Michael is a pioneer exploring the edge realms where the electric and old world meet." - LostInSound
“Intoxicating, rejuvenating, and unapologetically spiritual work...entertaining songs that completely upend the stereotypes of intelligent music...instantly memorable and utterly magnetic tunes whose authenticity and sweetness is boundary breaking.”
- Reality Sandwich“Michael has mastered a method of playing on a pedestal all its own. Ultimately [his work] is an exploration into what you perceive music, the guitar, and technology can do…then completely altering it.”
- Mixolydian
Refusing to be contained by a single genre or approach, avant-fingerstyle guitarist, multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter, and electroacoustic pioneer Michael Garfield pushes the envelope of fearless creative exploration in every available dimension. With studio releases and live sets that flow from cosmic love songs to dizzying etudes to intricate, constantly-evolving soundscapes, his unique blend of intense technicality and aching vulnerability draws comparisons to artists as far afield as Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, Son Lux, Jeff Buckley, David Byrne, and Kaki King.
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(100% of music sales go directly to the artists at musician-owned cooperative Subvert, where Michael is a founding member.)
Career Highlights
Michael has performed over five hundred concerts on three continents — including at Boom, Rainbow Serpent, Earth Frequency, Motion Notion, Wakarusa, Moogfest, Sonic Bloom, SXSW, Art Outside, Astronox, and Rootwire festivals, as well as a host of legendary venues including Arcosanti, Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return, The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, The Dallas Museum of Natural History, Austin’s Paramount Theater, Detroit’s Majestic Theatre, and The Santa Fe Institute.
Along the way, he has shared the stage with a prismatic array of artists, including:
DeVotchKa, Taylor McFerrin, Papadosio, Gaudi, Mary Lattimore, Fareed Haque, Entheogenic, Tim Reynolds, Random Rab, Bluetech, That 1 Guy, Willy Porter, Zach Deputy, The Floozies, Rena Jones, Andreas Kapsalis, Sqwerv, Ayla Nereo, The Human Experience, Bird of Prey, Erothyme, Master Margherita, and members of Beats Antique and The String Cheese Incident.
Michael spent over five years as #1 on ReverbNation’s global Experimental Music charts and has been featured in the score of numerous award-winning documentaries (including Shane Mauss’ Psychonautics and PBS’ Arts in Context) and on podcasts (including The Psychedelic Salon, Danny Jones, Love & Philosophy, Erik Davis’ Expanding Mind, and The Invisible Room)…studied for peer-reviewed research in The Journal of the Royal Society Interface and The Proceedings of EVA London…and deployed in live theater productions (including P3M5 and Land Without Evil).
He streamed the world’s first POV concert through Google Glass, was the first musician in the world to use X-ray observatory data sonification, generative AI, and live instrumentation together in one piece. He was also the first musician to perform with the Synesthesia music visualizer in a public alpha test at the Austin Technology Forum in 2015, and the first to use it in mind-altering A/V setups for his futurist talks at Moogfest and Boom Festival 2016 (on lineups with Jaron Lanier, Reggie Watts, Sunn O))), and Solar Fields). In 2023 he composed a 46-minute original score for the Biosphere 2 retrospective exhibition at UC San Diego’s Gallery QI.
Committed to adventurous venues and collaborations (including live painters, visual projectionists, and avant-dance companies), Michael spent multiple years as the resident musician for Burning Man's aerial dance showcase, was the first musician ever involved with the MAPS Psychedelic Science Conference, featured prominently on the playlists for the the Phase 2 & 3 clinical trials for MDMA as PTSD therapy, and founded long-running group improvisation residencies in some of Austin and Santa Fe’s finest listening rooms (including Loopers' Night, Paint Jam, and The Tumbleroot Music Lab).
The power of music to effect positive change matters enormously to Michael, who has organized a number of benefit compilations including for Sasha Shulgin, Kiva.org, and The Evolver Social Movement.
More Press & Artist Reviews
“Monstrously talented...an act the likes of which I have not seen in a long time.”
- Willy Porter“The perfect opening act.”
- Michael Travis (String Cheese Incident, EOTO)“A transcendent exploration of what one man can achieve with an acoustic guitar and some pedals...the glitched-out grooves [are] simultaneously calm yet very much switched-on.”
- Everyday Guitar Gear“It takes creativity to make the next step in a newer, more shocking direction, but it takes a visionary to go beyond the breaking point and meet music on the other end of the spectrum. That’s what Michael Garfield does.”
- The Untz“Unique and amazing....something sorely lacking in the world in which we live where cookie-cutter boys and girls are given stardom on a daily basis. In this world, [Michael is] a supernova.”
- Penny Moon, HireABandStLouis.com"Michael Garfield's extraordinary acoustic work...finds the ears captivated and entranced in a dance of delightful sonic textures. A gifted instrumentalist, Garfield's vocal prowess should not go unheard either, resonating in haunting fashion, full of chills and thrills. This is wonderful, simple music for the listener's ears to feed on."
- Performer Magazine“Amazing to watch and even more amazing to listen to.”
- TwoGroove.com“Inspired, revelatory, heart wrenching, mind expanding noise, as if conducted from the noosphere in a collaboration by Leary, Terence McKenna and Teilhard de Chardin.”
- Tom Huckabee“Michael Garfield has some absolutely amazing chops...the musicianship on this album is truly wonderful.”
- Marquee Magazine"Phenomenal. I love the blurring of lines between performance-composition, space-time, etc. It's very moving too, and very strange. Awesome stuff."
- JF Martel (host of Weird Studies and author, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice)
"If you are like us, then [in you] lies a yearning to discover something DIFFERENT and new, something that floors you, something that moves you, something that gets you excited to go home and download everything of theirs available online and to tell all of your friends about it...Michael Garfield could do that for us this summer."
- Sparkleberry Lane
"Michael Garfield paints the world with sound...some truly mind-bending improvs. Fans of art and performance will find a lot to love."
- The Horn
"Don't jump to conclusions based on 'acoustic guitar improv'...this sounds more like some of the sonic explorations that came out of the Robert Fripp/Brian Eno collaborations than some hippie 'jamming' on an acoustic in a park somewhere. [It's] full of odd timbres and textures, but the occasional splash of melody erupts and there's a strange, sci-fi psycho-Western feel to a lot of it – let's just say if they'd ever done a psychedelic drug sequence on Firefly, this would have worked perfectly as the accompaniment...frequently evocative and never less than interesting."
– Denver Westword"'Golden Hour' slides into my veins and spreads its claws deep, holding me with unrelenting insistence and a funk groove plowed clean, deep and dangerously direct."
- David Namerow"Amazing. I have not seen that before...I was hypnotized."
- Ramaya Soskin"The twisting braids of sound he can generate with such a simple rig is incredible, as is the simmering energy that comes through even the quietest moments, a feeling of suspense that something you don't want to miss is about to happen. The inventiveness and the passion that drives all of the meticulous work that goes into such projects is evidence of a deep and interesting well of ideas...memorable and beautiful."
- LostInSound"Astonishing...insane guitar talent."
- Smother.net"Dope. Evolving cyberacoustic experimentation recorded in a geodesic dome..."
- Infinite Third"A Million Anniversaries has put me in a more spiritual place than I have been in quite some time...I highly suggest grabbing this album. It will make your day."
- NoneBackwards.com"This music makes me high. [Michael's] guitar talks. It tells stories and laughs and enters into shamanic fits…but it also weaves together a blanket of the familiar."
- David Titterington"Esoteric and intricate, I found myself struggling to describe his sound and style...some surprisingly pleasurable heartbreak."
- Mousike Magazine"The only reason this album might not be appreciated is if you don't have a musical ear."
- Scene Magazine"An amazing artist. The diversity of sound on this album is incredible considering he only used an acoustic guitar and various pedals. You could enjoy it on a Friday night, or a Sunday morning."
- Appalachian Jamwich"An insanely moving spiritual experience in sound. His intricately developed soundscapes delve into the internal harmonies of what it means to be human: the percussion our pulse and the melody the flow of our spirit, like blood vessels serpentinely traversing through the labyrinthine veins of the body."
- LostInSound"Here is my frank review, Michael: I think you love babies. And you want everyone making them so you go around giving people this music. You're like the Johnny Appleseed of a whole new crop of children."
- Rebekah Armstrong“Electic elegance. You got it, keep it up, the world is hungry for the real deal.”
- Erial Ali“Watching your show the other day was a PROFOUND spiritual experience for me...a highlight of my musical experiences up till this point. Dude, you hit me on the deepest soul level.”
- DJ Dreamcode"I've chosen [this] as the music I will conceive my first child to...in all seriousness."
- Jeremy Judkins of Deep Blip Records“[Michael] is leading the charge in bringing a more human and soulful aspect back to electronic music.”
- Zympht“Great vibe, masterful looping. Hypnotic and wonderful sounds. Looking forward to hearing more.”
- Marco Oppedisano"Your sound is totally sunkissed Cali psych mysticism. That sound is classic and cannot be faked."
- Pelican Daughters“So so so SO Good!! Yay and wow.”
- Kyrstyn Pixton“Wow...awesome!”
- Dixon’s Violin“You made me cry.”
- Lauren Bruno (director, Solstice Live)“While I MEAN to give helpful, rational feedback, all I want to do is run around and throw copies of your CD at people, photograph their faces upon listening, and give THAT to you instead. The music makes me FEEL too strongly to be able to THINK about it enough to speak on it in a way that would be useful to you.”
- Ruth Carter"If you've never seen [Michael] perform live before, it's something between a front row seat at a paradigm-shifting TED talk, and sharing the archetypal wonder on display when a modern child first interacts with a mechanism of artificial intelligence, grappling with the intriguing chasm between its utilitarian function and its subtle humanity."
- Jared Buschbaum“Show me someone who believes they have an original idea, and I will invite them to meet Michael Garfield.
- Colorado Music Buzz“A bit of a philosopher-scientist…he likes to go deep.”
- Santa Fe Reporter“Known for his chill and energetic guitar music, which showcases the technical side of himself...a lot of Garfield’s work comes into making his music performable.”
- Albuquerque Journal"Michael Garfield is simply too multi-talented to be categorized, too out-of-the-box to be typed…a masterful thinker, poet-philosopher, and visionary artist."
- Ecstatic Saturdays