Philadelphia-based guitarist/bandleader Chris Forsyth has released a string of acclaimed records of sprawling, widescreen guitar rock. He and his ensemble, The Solar Motel Band, have quickly developed a reputation as an incredible live act, provoking comparisons to visionary artists such as Television, Popol Vuh, Neil Young & Crazy Horse, and Richard Thompson.
Despite psychedelic leanings, Forsyth’s music has always trained toward concision — plenty of space, yet never slack— in tunes that erupt with startling swiftness, then spend the rest of their quick-burning lives teasing multiple moods and patterns out of relatively simple materials. Chris’s latest release, Dreaming In The Non-Dream (No Quarter) is the follow-up to 2016’s acclaimed double album The Rarity of Experience, which The New York Times said was, "full of tense and dramatic jamming… [evoking] aspects of Miles Davis’s electric period and various kinds of rock-beyond-rock."
Dreaming In The Non-Dream is a tighter and briefer set, comprised of 4 songs, recorded in the fall of 2016. Forsyth says: “It was made very, very quickly and tracked entirely live with all the musicians in the room and just a few overdubs. I think reflecting on what was in the air while working on this – Brexit and then Trump’s election – I did not really have the patience or the desire to do something painstaking. I wanted to take that intensity that we were all feeling and put it on the record.” NPR Music premiered the 16 minute title track, saying: “It’s concise and lean, almost speeding on an empty tank through a tireless groove that solders dusty Ohio punk to krautrock’s soothing repetitions, dipping from warped boogie into jittery synths, pausing for a brief, mellow reprieve and then gasping towards an arid and exhilarating conclusion.”
