Arto Lindsay: Encyclopedia Of Arto (Northern Spy, 2014)
May 2, 2014 at 11:51 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Arto Lindsay: Encyclopedia Of Arto
2CD anthology of the solo career of legendary no wave guitarist Arto Lindsay, spanning 6 solo albums from 1995 to 2004, released on Bar/None, Rykodisc, and Righteous Babe. The liner notes list lyrics and songwriters/musicians (which include Brian Eno, Ryuichi Sakamoto, DJ Spooky, and many others), but doesn’t mention which albums the tracks are from or when they were recorded, forcing you to take his oeuvre as a whole, rather than dissecting it by era. Several tracks are in Portuguese, reflecting Lindsay’s Brazilian roots, and his vocals are always smooth and suave, and while there’s hints of his abrasive guitar shredding, the songs are mostly pretty laid back and accessible, but with their share of weirdness, and plenty of detailed, exploratory arrangements. There’s ventures into slow jam R&B (“Illuminated”), drum’n’bass (“Complicity”), trip-hop (“Ridiculously Deep”), modernized samba (“Personagem”), and airy, drum machine-driven indie-rock (“Reentry”). The second disc consists of solo live performances, stripping his sound back to his noisy, abrasive no wave guitar shredding, but still paying tribute to his influences, turning songs by Prince (“Erotic City”!), Al Green and Chico Buarque on their heads. If you prefer DNA to Arto’s slicker solo recordings, this disc will be of greater interest to you. The best moments are when he just attacks his guitar, throwing effects left and right through the speakers and ranting abstract poetry. The whole disc is just a bracing trip of no wave electro-shock therapy.
The Answer Is In The Beat 
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