Chris Forsyth - Rare Dreams: Solar Live 2.27.18 (Expanded) (Live) '2021

Tracks list

	On February 27, 2018, Chris Forsyth & The Solar Motel Band (comprised, in this
iteration, of long-time SMB bassist Peter Kerlin and Kerlin’s Sunwatchers
battery mate Jason Robira on drums) were close to wrapping up an 18-date tour of
the EU and UK with a two-set, one hour and 45 minute show at Cafe OTO,
London’s premier venue for adventurous music. Highlights of that show are
included in this live release, RARE DREAMS: SOLAR LIVE 2.27.18, recorded before
a packed house seated mere feet from the band’s amplifiers. These
recordings reveal a band that is clearly in high spirits and high gear,
operating with an expansive, improvisatory fleetness that allows them to stretch
the material to almost ludicrous extremes and then let it to snap back to some
semblance of form while somehow seemingly never wasting a note, a beat, a
gesture. The four tracks included here comprise material culled from (at the
time) the two most recent Solar Motel Band records DREAMING IN THE NON-DREAM (No
Quarter, 2017) and THE RARITY OF EXPERIENCE (No Quarter, 2016) plus covers of
two Neil Young songs - the autobiographical plaint “Don’t Be
Denied,” lyrically relocated by Forsyth from Young's Canada and Hollywood
to the more personally relevant geography of New Jersey and Philadelphia, and
encore “Barstool Blues” (they’d run out of material to play,
so another Neil Young tune it was). While the covers establish Forsyth’s
basis, serving as an homage to Young and the quest for self-realization, the
long tracks’ jams showcase the trance-inducing power of the Solar Motel
Band as a performing entity. Kerlin’s gymnastically propulsive bass
playing locks in with Robira’s relentless thud, each serving as
counterpoint to some of the most blistering guitar work of Forsyth’s
career. The telepathically dynamic interplay of the trio explodes with whiplash
intensity across the 15-plus minute takes of “Dreaming In The
Non-Dream” and “The First 10 Minutes of Cocksucker Blues,”
each song’s structure serving as a framework for extended lava flows of
energy. At one point late in the “Dreaming” jam, Forsyth unplugs the
jack from his guitar, dragging it across the strings and lashing the body of his
single-pickup “parts" Esquire, producing a desiccated barrage of
percussive static. This is music beyond the notes; it is an expression of pure
electric ecstasy, a simultaneous negation and celebration of rock music’s
(indeed all musics’) essential energy. In contrast to the expansive but
meticulously detailed guitar arrangements of his recordings, here
Forsyth’s unhinged live guitar sound positively roars with a barely
restrained vocal intensity, from liquid melodic lines to gnarled blasts of free
jazz scree, to pulsating lead/rhythm vamping. I’ve had the pleasure of
witnessing this band up close for a number of years now and I can
authoritatively attest that while every show is different, when the SMB is
running down a steep hill at full speed (as on these takes), they become a
single leaderless vibrating sonic tornado, possibly beyond the control and logic
of the players themselves, picking up listeners along the way and taking them
along for the ride straight into a solar furnace of sound.
- Jerome Onfront, Philadelphia 

Tracklist:
1.01 - Chris Forsyth, The Solar Motel Band - Dreaming In The Non-Dream (Live at
Cafe OTO) (15:55) 
1.02 - Chris Forsyth, The Solar Motel Band - Don't Be Denied (Live at Cafe OTO)
(7:45) 
1.03 - Chris Forsyth, The Solar Motel Band - The First 10 Minutes of Cocksucker
Blues (Live at Cafe OTO) (15:00) 
1.04 - Chris Forsyth, The Solar Motel Band - Barstool Blues (Live at Cafe OTO)
(3:39)

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