Solar Motel (Expanded)

Description

Expanded 2xLP includes two studio outtakes from the original sessions, and a side-long live session recorded at WFMU by the then brand-new Solar Motel Band. Over the last two decades Philadelphia-based guitarist Chris Forsyth has released over a dozen critically lauded albums that have established him as one of today's most unique and acclaimed guitar player /composers - a forward-thinking classicist synthesizing cinematic expansiveness with a pithy lyricism and rhythmic directness that makes even his 20-minute workouts feel as clear, direct, and memorable as a 4-minute song. Named after a run-down lodge in New Jersey near where he grew up, Solar Motel was the first full-band project from Chris Forsyth. Originally released in 2013, it was considered his most ambitious and sublime work of Cosmic Americana to date, and the idea of the Motel also figured into a band where vacancies would open and close. "'Solar Motel' is the first record on which I overtly took rock tropes and twisted them into new shapes, incorporating so many of my interests and influences - the twin-guitar elegance of Television, the sprawl of West Coast psych, the boiled down Rock Minimalism of Rhys Chatham, the abstract tangles of free improv, an undercurrent of ecstatic jazz energy, and the studio textures of Eno/Cale/Roxy 70s art rock. 'Solar Motel' basically set the template for much of what I did for the remainder of that decade."