An Education in Guitar

Ever since I first discovered his music, Chris Forsyth has been one of my favourite musicians. A psych rock guitarist, he proved himself worthy to support Grouper due to his use of drone and a thirst for experimentalism, but he elegantly balanced this with some more conventional use of the guitar not unlike blues, folk or even bluegrass in places.

After seeing him perform a hypnotic and enveloping set I set about getting my hands on all the material I could, admittedly not very much. I did, however, immensely enjoy his 2011 album Paranoid Cat and this year’s krauty collaboration with Koen Holtkamp.

Forsyth performs live with a band, but in the studio the experience is quite different. The drums are completely absent. This makes Forsyth’s music a much more distant relative of traditional rock and in a way that’s why his music is so interesting. Guitar is an instrument commonly synonymous with rock, yet it is the sole guide through Chris Forsyth’s musical studies. The very instrument that gave rise to the musical decadence of shred, to the indulgence of simple cock-rock riffs here sheds its baggage; becoming instead a source of ambient, minimal soundscapes that hark back to the past of guitar, its roots in blues and folk with a nod to today’s more experimental ideas of music.

On ‘Kenzo Deluxe,’ this is in full swing. Opener ‘The First Ten Minutes of Cocksucker Blues’ syncs up with the infamous documentary of The Rolling Stones’ tour to support Exile on Main Street. Its bluesy

Guitar is an instrument commonly synonymous with rock, yet it is the sole guide through Chris Forsyth’s musical studies

sound frames the musical context of such work, while surpassing it in terms of thought and much like this one, every track is as much a study in guitar, what it can do and its cultural landscape as it is a great track on a chillout album.

This is an album where guitar truly reigns supreme. In tracks such as the opener, he shows how to be rhythmically astute without a drummer, as a catchy riff repeats under melodies and solos with a bluesy tone and occasionally a bluegrass style twang to them. This song is similar to a later track ‘East Kensington Run Down,’ not in its sound but in its structure. Both develop a groove using a simple riff that remains unchanged, modulating only slightly as the sonic environment around it evolves, acting as the vehicle for the musical journey of the melodies. Until, that is, the songs break down in to a much less rigid form.

A personal favourite of mine is ‘Boston St Lullaby no. 2.’ This is by some distance the most dissonant and distorted. I would regard it as Forsyth’s take on drone, with ebbing and flowing sounds of a distorted and melodic guitar, drenched in reverb and layered over itself. It has an almost rugged nature with a billowing drone of distortion underneath the melody, and perhaps it is ironic that it is the moment where he offsets ugly and beautiful where we see perhaps the most beautiful moment of the album, as a higher and more ethereal notes pass over the drone like core of the track leaving an air of euphoria.

More melodic pieces, ambient, ornate soundscapes are found on ‘Downs and Ups’ and ‘Boston St Lullaby no.1,’ the album’s more reflective pieces. ‘Downs and Ups’, in particular, makes me think of America two hundred years in the past, with its low tech, barren and insistent melody. These tracks are relaxing and while probably not the best on the album are worthwhile listens, be it to chill out or because they’re simply good guitar performances.

And at the end of the day, that’s what this album is. I could wax lyrical about how it’s a statement on cultural stuff or where it might fit into musical tradition or the different genres he experiments with, but at the end of the day it’s just a guy and his guitar, and in a way that is the most flattering it can get. Forsyth shows his immense talent but also his years of experience with an instrument he clearly loves and gives an album that, were it better known, would be a landmark not only for him but for the guitar in general.