RECORD RELEASE EVENT:
CHRIS FORSYTH & THE SOLAR MOTEL BAND perform "SOLAR MOTEL" with live video by MARIA DUMLAO
plus MIND OVER MIRRORS
ABOUT THE EVENT
This performance celebrates the release of Chris Forsyth's Solar Motel, released November 2013 on the Paradise of Bachelors label. It is also the premiere performance of the Solar Motel video, created by artist Maria Dumlao to accompany the record in it's entirety, featuring live video work by the artist. Forsyth's Solar Motel Band - guitarist Paul Sukeena, bassist Peter Kerlin, and drummer Steven Urgo - will be joined by longtime Forsyth collaborator and Kansas City native Shawn Edward Hansen on organ for this show, recreating his role in the recording of the Solar Motel.
Opening up the evening will be Mind Over Mirrors, the solitary reeling of American harmoniumist/electronicist Jaime Fennelly. Utilizing an Indian pedal harmonium, oscillators, tape delays, and an assortment of synthesizing processors, Fennelly bends slowly-building, repetitive melodies into massive sonic mountains. When the Rest Are Up at Four is the fourth Mind Over Mirrors album following releases on Digitalis, Hands In the Dark, & Aguirre/Gift Tapes.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Chris Forsyth's hypnotic compositions assimilate art-rock textures with vernacular American influences. Long active in the international underground, he's released a series of acclaimed records as a solo artist that demonstrate a resolute engagement in making corporeal/cerebral music that transcends such subterranean realms, reaching instead for a bleeding-edge physicality and lyricism heavily influenced by his private studies with Television guitarist Richard Lloyd. The fascinating tension manifest in Forsyth's music between often long-form, rarefied abstraction and percolating rhythms and rock/roots structures animates notable recent works such as his 2011 LP Paranoid Cat on Family Vineyard (rated a "kinetic masterpiece" by Pitchfork) and Early Astral, a 2012 duo LP with Koen Holtkamp (Mountains) on Blackest Rainbow which was memorably characterized as "80's Garcia jamming at Epcot" by one unnamed record exec.
His 2012 Kenzo Deluxe LP on Northern Spy, a debt heavily owed to Exile on Main Street, has been described by Aquarium Drunkard as "sublime"; the Philadelphia City Paper deems it "resonant [and] incisive... a cosmic abstraction of the American guitar tradition, reducing blues, rock, folk and improvisation into their spare, hypnotic base elements." The Wire praises Forsyth as "an erudite and farsighted guitar stylist, mapping a path that's hip and scholarly in equal measure." Uncut calls him "an emergent master.
Forsyth has toured throughout Europe and the U.S., sharing stages with such like-minded travelers as Steve Gunn, Sic Alps, Endless Boogie, Grouper, Loren Connors, William Tyler, and Rhys Chatham. Prior to his relocation to Philadelphia in 2009, he was a (founding) member of Brooklyn-based Peeesseye. He's also collaborated with a diverse range of artists including singer/songwriter Meg Baird (appearing on her 2011 Drag City release Seasons on Earth), Japanese guitarist/boogie master Tetuzi Akiyama, trumpeter Nate Wooley, and choreographers Miguel Gutierrez, RoseAnne Spradlin, and Meg Foley, and is a recipient of a 2011 Pew Fellowship in the Arts.
This program has been funded in part, with a grant from the American Composer's Forum - Philadelphia Chapter.
Admission is FREE