Basic - This Is Basic LP

Chris Forsyth: guitar
Nick Millevoi: baritone guitar & drum machine
Mikel Patrick Avery: percussion & electronics

BASIC, a mind-meld between Chris Forsyth, his frequent running partner (and formidable 6-string thinker) Nick Millevoi, and Mikel Patrick Avery presents This Is BASIC, a complex and entrancing instrumental LP recasting forgotten scraps of guitar history into a moving mosaic of strings, skins and electronics.

Back in the mid ’80s (a moment in music history as remote to us now as bebop was to us back then), there was an entire subgenre spawned by prog-rock-gone-new-wave icons meeting up to make sounds, their names reading like a panoply of druggy law firms: Manzanera & Bruford, Fripp & Summers, French/Frith/Kaiser/Thompson. Their records clogged pre-internet college radio playlists, cut-out bins and public library shelves, but served as a touchstone for heads seeking inspiration from deeper wells than FM rock radio (which was fixated, then as now, on the Eagles and Led Zeppelin). Far from being mere self-indulgences, these “side projects” were, at best, outlets for exploration of then-novel technologies (looping, drum programming, sampling, etc.) for creators otherwise stuck in ’70s projects moribund with fan expectations and music-biz balance sheets.

One such record is guitarist Robert Quine and drummer Fred Maher’s Basic, an arachnidian weave of subtly shifting rhythm tracks and chiming guitar that, true to its name, was left largely untouched by Quine’s celebrated McLaughlin-through-a-cheese grater solos (a trait that did not please many critics at the time). Quine’s untimely passing has since awakened many to the joys hidden within his scant solo discography, but more expansive ears were already tuned in, including a few guitarists hungry for sounds outside of the second-hand pentatonic canon—among them, Chris Forsyth and Nick Millevoi.

According to Forsyth, “I’ve loved that record for 20-plus years and hardly ever met anyone that liked it. To me, that is an incredibly personal, beautiful, one-of-a-kind record.” Millevoi, another connoisseur of restless and exploratory guitar records, was also a fan: “There’s still stuff that was left unexplored within those sounds.”