(2019) Chris Forsyth - All Time Present

Review:
Guitarist/composer Chris Forsyth grew from experimental roots but developed his playing into something masterful and distinctive as he honed his craft over the years. Even while he was most active in the sometimes challenging sounds of New York’s improvisational scene in the late ’90s and early 2000s, Forsyth was looking for new ways to twist his instrument into something that could be technically sharp and without conventional boundaries at the same time. By the time he founded the Solar Motel Band in 2013, Forsyth had spent decades cultivating a guitar sound that drew on the sturdiness of classic roots rock and extended free-form jamming and elements of spiritual jazz and early Americana. The sprawling double album All Time Present is a sampler pack of Forsyth’s strongest impulses, offering up just eight mostly instrumental pieces but stretching out in different directions over the course of its hour-plus playing time.Though All Time Present is the first work billed as a solo album since 2013’s Solar Motel, Forsyth is bolstered by various players on every track. Most notably, bassist Peter Kerlin (also of Sunwatchers) and drummer Ryan Jewell add weight to tracks like album opener “Tomorrow Might As Well Be Today” or the Rosali-sung “Dream Song.” These songs push steadily while they buzz with a loose, anxious energy, like Crazy Horse jamming with Amon Duul and trying to keep up. Songs drift in and out of each other, the free ramble of “The Past Ain’t Passed” swimming in formlessness for almost nine minutes before giving way to the acoustic intro of barnburner “New Paranoid Cat.” 

Tracklist:
01 - Tomorrow Might As Well Be Today
02 - Mystic Mountain
03 - The Man Who Knew Too Much
04 - Dream Song
05 - The Past Ain’t Passed
06 - New Paranoid Cat
07 - (Livin’ On) Cubist Time
08 - Techno Top

Summary:
Country: USA
Genre: post-rock, psychedelic rock