Arto Lindsay Trio
Painted Desert
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
More than the others DNA practiced their art with remarkable concision and power; their tunes rarely lasted much more than two minutes. Anchored by the freakish organ patterns of Robin Crutchfield and later the thick, churlish bass lines of Tim Wright, guitarist and vocalist Arto Lindsay and drummer Ikue Mori generated a madly unhinged skree that turned the stop-start funk of James Brown into an asymmetrical nightmare. Lindsay spat out dissociative lyrics as if they were sonic spasms and played guitar in much the same way. Eschewing melody altogether, his guitar shrieks were tonally slate gray, arriving either in dronelike waves or in staccato bursts deliberately out of sync with the band’s attenuated rhythmic schemes. A true punk drummer, Mori was technically an utter mess, but her primitive thudding brilliantly charged the racket and served as a backbone to the more esoteric machinations of Lindsay and Crutchfield or Wright. Aside from their four entries on No New York, DNA released one six-song EP, A Taste of DNA, and, after they broke up, a posthumous live CD.
Lindsay followed DNA with a thrilling stint in the original Golden Palominos, which–prior to serving as drummer Anton Fier’s all-star project with people like Michael Stipe and Syd Straw–released one of the best art-rock records of the 80s, fusing raw funk grooves with an assortment of fascinating noise tactics. Most of his post-DNA work, however, was in the Ambitious Lovers, with keyboardist Peter Scherer. They released three increasingly commercial albums of pristine dance pop that were dotted with concentrated blasts of weird noises and Brazilian pop melodies and rhythms (Lindsay, though American born, was raised in Brazil). But Scherer’s production sheen sanded away most of Lindsay’s quirky personality. At the time Lindsay was also involved in many recording projects under the leadership of others. It seemed as though he lost his originality.
With a number of varied recording situations planned for future release on Zorn’s new Tzadik label, Mori has stretched once-limited skills into a generous wealth of possibilities, none of which are typical. While Lindsay’s new album shows him traveling full circle, Mori’s slowly unraveling body of work suggests that her talent has diffused into ever-varying streams of light.
