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As one of no wave’s original skronksters, Arto Lindsay pushed the guitar to its noisiest extremes with his improvisational trio, DNA, yet, as a solo artist, he recorded beautiful, soulful music informed by the sounds of his Brazilian heritage. By pairing a “best of” compilation of his composed work with a recent live solo recording, the guitarist proves that the two worlds are, in fact, quite the same.
Encyclopedia of Arto’s first volume collects carefully selected tracks recorded between 1996 and 2004. Here, Lindsay’s Brazilian connection comes to the forefront. Through twelve quiet, introspective, highly emotional songs, the guitarist incorporates elements of samba, bossanova and tropicalismo into his thought-provoking lounge compositions. His slightly nasal monotone, effective in both English and Portuguese, recalls Lou Reed, Suicide’s Alan Vega and Jad Fair from Half Japanese as his cryptic musings reveal a passionate, literate mind.
Volume Two sees Lindsay return to his no wave roots with live recordings from 2011-2012. In his characteristically jagged style, he uses his guitar as more of a paintbrush than a musical instrument, creating sonic pictures to accompany his excited vocals. Songs from Volume One appear in drastically different versions among groundbreaking covers of Prince’s “Erotic City,” Al Green’s “Simply Beautiful” and a few Brazilian standards. Suddenly, Lindsay’s two worlds collide as his emotionally charged passion persists through both his improvised atonal guitar attacks and richly produced compositional pieces.
Highly, yet humbly, influential, Arto Lindsay’s work remains as important and relevant now as it did in 1978 when revealed on Brian Eno’s No New York compilation. Delve into his world, where the distinctions between abrasiveness and beauty are not so distinct and life’s complexities unfold in simplicity.
