Marc Orleans, the prolific guitarist and pedal steel player who was a member of the long-running experimental Boston collective Sunburned Hand of the Man, has died. Tom Carter, the Charalambides guitarist who made music with Orleans in the group Eleven Twenty-Nine, confirmed the news in a statement.
Some of Orleans’ earliest recording came as a member of the Boston grunge band Spore, who were signed to Taang! Records in the early ’90s. They released two albums, 1993’s Spore and 1994’s Giant, as well as a split 7″ with labelmates Misson of Burma in 1994. In 1996 and 1997, he put out records with the band Juneau. By 1998, he was appearing on records by Sunburned Hand of the Man. The massively prolific group have released dozens of records at this point. Orleans worked on many of them, including their 2003 album Headdress, which was named Best New Music by Pitchfork at the time, and the Four Tet-produced 2007 album Fire Escape.
Orleans was also a member of the avant garde trio Enos Slaughter; their last album Béisbol was released by Three Lobed in 2008. He was also a member of D. Charles Speer & the Helix; their most recent album was the 2014 Thrill Jockey album Doubled Exposure. Orleans also contributed to records by Steve Gunn, Chris Forsyth, Meg Baird, Michael Chapman, and the Clean’s Hamish Kilgour.
His duo with Tom Carter, Eleven Twenty-Nine, released two albums: a self-titled 2011 album and A Tithe to Hell in 2014. “Made a lot of music with this beautiful and tortured individual who died because the world failed him,” Carter wrote. “RIP Marc glad you knew I loved you.”