On the quest for experimental guitar music one tends to come across some of the same gestures and themes, which might well be interpreted to stunning effect. There’s that wiry and circuitous blend of math rock with free jazz improvisation, aching Americana which tends to emphasise rich melodicism and a reverberant sense of space, a primitive tradition which can feel ever-present even as its own roots and influences lie in specific locales from the Hindustani classical raga to the fingerpicking ethos of bluegrass or the country blues, the slow-moving textures and varied distortions of shoegaze and post-rock, slowcore and modern iterations of drone music, while more on the margins one might occasionally find a few flamenco stylings or traces of Hawaiian slack-key.
What makes the guitar music of Chris Forsyth different is that he manages to incorporate many of these styles and effects within a psychedelic frame, especially since he traded Peeesseye for his Solar Motel Band whose music has sometimes been hailed as a hallmark of cosmic Americana and established the more densely groove-oriented BASIC trio alongside Nick Millevoi and Mikel Patrick Avery. His own cited influences stretch from the seventies art rock of Television, Roxy Music, Brian Eno and John Cale to a distinctly eighties strain of prog-cum-new wave which culminated in one sense through the pared-back avant-garde ambiances of Robert Quine and Fred Maher on the album which gave BASIC its name, or from the Durutti Column and dreamier catalogue of 4AD to the no wave and rock minimalism of Rhys Chatham.
The result of such diverse yet wilful interests allows Forsyth to straddle rock and jazz from the mainstream to the margins, with a scope that stretches from the acid tones and shimmering psychedelia of the West Coast across the continent and all the way for instance to European free jazz centres or the Sahel with its rollicking brand of desert blues. His latest trio entitled Chris Forsyth’s WHAT IS NOW proves even more exploratory or freewheeling as he is joined by John Moran on the double bass and Joey Sullivan on drums. Both musicians are part of another Philadelphia-based band in the form of the vibraphonist Victor Vieira-Branco’s free jazz trio Bark Culture, while Sullivan is a member of the alternative country collective Florry and Moran alongside Vieira-Branco helps make up the Daniel Villarreal Trio, whose leader from a slightly different perspective shares a similar penchant for funky grooves and sun-flecked psychedelia.
Both / And the debut set from Chris Forsyth’s WHAT IS NOW features three long and spontaneous jams each of around twenty minutes. The record opener and title track offers a dubby cross between long-form jazz and psychedelia in the vein of Peaking Lights through its glimmering guitar and shrugging rhythm section, with a late refrain calling to the mind the Smashing Pumpkins fan favourite ‘Set the Ray to Jerry’.
‘7-11 Red Eye’ opens with its legs akimbo and some of those slanted and stateless textures that may remind one of Oren Ambarchi and his quixotic contemporary blend of Western free jazz investigations with Asian plucked zither traditions. Moran and Sullivan maintain a sidewise shuffle amid what sounds like the incessant chatter of a diner or roadside cafe. The angular brevity of the rhythms and the shimmering quality of Forsyth’s guitar licks remain even as ‘7-11 Red Eye’ slips into more of a groove as it progresses. Eventually the track looses more of its tethers, sounding brisk and lithe with some choppy percussion and squidgy bass as Forsyth himself evokes a koto as much as anything.
Finally the third and last track ‘No Name II’ shifts shape or reformulates once again as the trio now carry the dank glimmer of dark metal, with the bass and drums at first lurching or tumbling forth in short, staggered bursts. Together in fact they sound almost medieval, glinting knights in their armour or magi and alchemists as the leader Forsyth relinquishes a series of high-pitched and pealing guitar pulls replete with their overtones. Steadily enough the song turns into a greasy oiler, all engines revving amid an atmosphere ripe with hair pomade and exhaust fumes.
Then the drums really kick in and cut through all of this vaporousness or gaseousness, providing ‘No Name II’ with more of a backbone or sense of shape courtesy of their steadying backbeat. The three pieces were recorded on two separate occasions, with ‘Both / And’ captured at 48 Record Bar in Philadelphia by Victor Vieira-Branco on 9 October of last year and both ‘7-11 Red Eye’ and ‘No Name II’ bottled up by Brucie Millions at the Young American in Germantown on 13 December, but it is this latter tune which really has the feel of a live performance. More chattering as though from an audience helps to enliven the composition as some double stop guitar adds a tremulous bluesy quality to the piece, and ‘No Name II’ does shift into another gear as a Southern rock or blues stomper albeit with a high step or swaggering restraint. There’s plenty of separation between the fullness of the instruments as Forsyth and WHAT IS NOW turn into Jim Morrison-style lounge lizards before strutting towards the close.
