BASIC is a fresh project featuring Chris Forsyth on guitar, Nick Millevoi on baritone guitar and drum machine, and Mikel Patrick Avery on percussion and electronics. Dispensing with vocals, the trio takes inspiration from a specific and fleeting strain of 1980s art-rock where creatively restless guitarists embraced technological advances that were generally associated with the new wave. There are elements of homage in BASIC’s sound but the emphasis is largely on intricate and precise weaves that are imbued with energy levels substantial and rocking. This Is BASIC is available now on vinyl, compact disc, and digital from the No Quarter label of Philadelphia, PA.
Amongst the outfits cited as influential to BASIC’s approach is the duo of Robert Fripp and Andy Summers. They cut a pair of albums, I Advance Masked in 1982 and Bewitched in ’84 that offer a solid baseline for the “prog-rock-gone-new-wave” sensibility that was extant for a good portion of the decade. Bill Bruford is also mentioned, which brings the ’80s incarnation of King Crimson front and center. While Adrian Belew’s Lone Rhino isn’t name checked in the text accompanying BASIC’s debut, that 1982 album is still quite relevant to BASIC’s mode of operation.
The thinking person’s supergroup French/Frith/Kaiser/Thompson gets listed as part of BASIC’s constellation of precedent, and surely some of the ’80s solo work of Fred Frith and Henry Kaiser is part of the equation as well, especially the former’s The Technology of Tears (1988) and the latter’s Devil in the Drain (’87), records both released in the USA by SST on which Frith and Kaiser both play the Synclavier.
One of Frith’s many bands was Massacre, the first incarnation of which featured Bill Laswell on bass and Fred Maher on drums. In 1984, Maher and guitarist Robert Quine recorded Basic, the album that provided this BASIC with its moniker, along with a groundbreaking and once ubiquitous computer coding language (hence the all caps).
Quine and Maher’s Basic is described in those text notes as having been largely met with ambivalence upon release, a reaction that applies to a fair percentage of the prog-wave output detailed above, and with occasional rockist hostility thrown in. It’s highly doubtful that This Is BASIC will garner a similar reaction, mainly because its six tracks are raw meat for lovers of post-rock and for that matter, math rock.
Band name aside, the playing here is anything but basic, emphatically eschewing simplicity while maintaining a high level of intensity throughout. Opener “For Stars of the Air” is an engrossing cyclical tapestry in no small part because it grooves up a storm, delivering a sound that’s tangibly art-rock (and very rocking) while resisting cliché and blending a contemporary thrust into the overall scheme.
There are sonic elements that unabashedly harken back to the ’80s, like the aggressive rigidity of the programmed rhythms in “Nerve Time” and the drum pad synth sounds in “Positive Halfway,” but alongside are aspects that throw back even farther, such as the baritone guitar in “Nerve Time” dishing very subtle hints of Duane Eddy.
Side two begins with the humid simmer of “Last Resort of the Gambling Man,” a change of pace that’s followed by another dense thicket of slap-cracking beats and guitars that soar, croak, and dart forth in “Versatile Switch.” This Is BASIC closes with the stunning “New Auspicious,” the track ringing forth with a focused urgency that registers as joyous. Even after all its inspirations are considered, the album is firmly of the moment.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
