Chris Forsyth leans into the cool jazz aesthetic of his new ensemble at first, but these long pieces morph, over time, into driving, droning grooves. The trio, What Is Now, is made up of the Philadelphia experimental guitarist plus John Moran and Joey Sullivan, the rhythm section from Bark Culture, a vibraphone-forward cool jazz combo centered around Victor Vieira-Branco.
This EP under review includes three extended, improvised tracks, jazzier than Forsyth’s typical grooves, but only intermittently. The title cut is loosely put together, with glancing connections between instruments largely pursuing their own ends. The longest of these cuts, it is also the least boxed in by time signature. It stirs to life in a rumble of drums, abstract stabs and slouches of acoustic bass and then furious spurts of agitated bowing. Forsyth’s guitar is high and clear, without the smudges and slides that would align it with his bandmates’ jazz inclinations but also sans the motorik pulse or boogie you expect from Forsyth. Instead, you hear a slush and shuffle of drums, piercing guitar shrieks, and the bass, knotted up in snarls, punching out quick combinations. The guitar gets sharper, louder, more emphatic as the piece goes on, gradually filling up the space so that it sounds more rock and less jazz.
That opening cut is the one with the most give in its joints. "7-11 Red Eye” is, by contrast, battened down and goal-oriented, and even the contemplative “No Name II” adheres to a steady cadence. And yet, there’s something inviting about the fluidity of the jazz bass, the intricacy of the tricky drums, pushing through post-rock propulsion like kudzu. It has always been hard to say whether Chris Forsyth plays rock or blues or drone or boogie. It depends on who’s around and how he feels about things. Here with two veterans of Philly’s jazz scene, he explores grooves that are more open-ended than usual, but bends them over time toward regular, repeating psychedelic grooves.
Chris Forsyth — Solar Motel (Expanded) (Algorithm Free)
Chris Forsyth marks the ten-year anniversary of his turn from towards rock with this expanded edition of Solar Motel, augmented with two previously unreleased studio tracks and a side-long live WFMU recording of “Paranoid Cat.” The two newly released tracks are a revelation, solidifying and reaffirming Forsyth’s connection to Television (he studied with Richard Lloyd) with cartwheeling guitar riffs and roiling, surging percussion in the epic vein of Marquee Moon.
Forsyth was just off his 2011 release of Paranoid Cat when he made Solar Motel, stillstruggling for a way to incorporate a palette of influences—Television, Takoma-style fingerpicking, psych and drone—into a coherent aesthetic. Our own Bill Meyer saw him as only partly successful at this on the previous album, calling Paranoid Cat, “an album that is full of good ideas lifted from other people’s work, but he makes such good use of them that it’s easy not to care.”
Solar Motel, Forsyth’s first full-band album, was a big step towards the driving, boogie-ing, rock-leaning long grooves that we have since come to associate with the guitarist. In the notes, he says, “Solar Motel is the first record on which I overtly took rock tropes and twisted them into new shapes, incorporating so many of my interests and influences - the twin-guitar elegance of Television, the sprawl of West Coast psych, the boiled down Rock Minimalism of Rhys Chatham, the abstract tangles of free improv, an undercurrent of ecstatic jazz energy, and the studio textures of Eno/Cale/Roxy ‘70s art rock.… Solar Motel basically set the template for much of what I did for the remainder of that decade.”
The band for Solar Motel included Forsyth, drummer Mike Pride, bassist Peter Kerlin and keyboard player Shawn Edward Hansen, all musicians that Forsyth had worked with previously in various roles and configurations. It was recorded mostly live, though Forsyth put in additional guitar after the fact to build up Television-like layers of interplay. The music took shape in four numbered tracks Solar Motel I through IV. “Part I” opens with tense, staccato guitar, at first alone, then joined by a second guitar and bass. The groove is insistent, cleanly minimal, and over it, Forsyth improvises warm, fluid arcs of solo guitar, and as it goes, the texture becomes less of a drone and more of a warm, living jam. This becomes a pattern over the next three track, as taut, disciplined motifs blossom into full-band free play. Repetition becomes a launching pad for the wildest swirls of improvisatory ornament, with sweet lyrical mid-range guitar vaulting over motorik grooves.
All that is still there, still striking in the way it marries austere experiment to lighter flaring guitar solo. If you haven’t heard it—or haven’t heard it in a while—all four original tracks remain very much worth a listen. However, it’s the new stuff that you’ll want to spin right away, because these two unreleased tracks take the basic experiment and launch them into richer, more exciting directions.
“Harmonious Dance,” at just under nine minutes, is the expanded release’s best tune. A slow chime of guitar notes hitting turbulence early on in Pride’s swelling drum roll. The notes get bigger, more resonant, more sustained as they go, taking on the burnished glow of Lloyd and Verlaine in tandem (though without the trebly yelp of vocals). “Long Warm Afternoon” starts out with warmth and sustained tones, building shimmering textures of guitar over a steady thump and roll. Both cuts feel less restrained, less tightly disciplined than the original Solar Motel cuts. It’s as if Forsyth had a concept for setting down guardrails and eventually swamping them with sensory data, and it took him a while to implement it fully.
The WFMU recording is fine, too, letting the twitchy glamor of “Paranoid Cat” stretch out, catch fire in a truly insane instrumental freakout and somehow stuff all that back into the bottle for a reprise of the original melody. But if you need a reason to check out this ten years after reissue, I’d look at the two unreleased tracks, where Forsyth and his band hit a groove they’ve been riding ever since.
