solo album „The Circular Train“ (2024):

“It draws deeply on the roots forms, particularly country and blues, that have always been at the heart of her music... the six pieces on The Circular Train are stealthy— the music is built of repeated structures with smooth but surprising transitions, and when explosions come, they feel earned.” -The Wire Magazine

“The guitar has a turbulent, crashing energy, erupting in violence, then settling back into a back slouching bluesrif ... thick and visceral enough to feel like a bodily presence, but it’s animated by an eerie, untethered spirit, corpus and shadow joined at the foot. It’s classic blues touched with the chaos of rock and the exploratory courage of free-jazz.” -Aquarium Drunkard

Mendoza is unquestionably one of today’s most unique and unconventional guitar goddesses, blazing her own path between the worlds of jazz, rock and the avant-garde, on jaw-dropping solo releases, and works with the likes of William Parker, Carla Bozulich and Fred Frith, as well as a member of the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet. On The Circular Train, the Brooklyn-based artist weaves a detailed travelogue of her own past, her ancestral homelands and the worlds of her friends and inspirations, through her angular guitar gymnastics alone. -Record Crates United

Ava Mendoza has never made an album quite as personal as her third solo full-length, The Circular Train. Through her decades of collaborations with Nels Cline, Carla Bozulich, William Parker, Fred Frith, Matana Roberts, and Mick Barr — plus years leading her power trio Unnatural Ways and playing in Bill Orcutt’s quartet — the guitarist’s name has become synonymous with virtuoso technique, raw passion, and visceral resonance, a player pushing the edges of the guitar’s possibilities. Along the way, from 2007 to 2023, Mendoza was writing these slow-burning, incandescent songs. The Circular Train is comprised solely of her single-tracked guitar playing and, on two songs, her corporeal singing.