Expanded LP release of "Rare Dreams: Solar Live 2.27.18" with an initial pressing of 500 on black wax (initial pressing of 300 on red vinyl is sold out!)
***Recommendation for UK/EU buyers: please pre-order from your preferred local indie shop or mail order to avoid high shipping costs.
Includes unlimited streaming of Rare Dreams: Solar Live 2.27.18
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 77 days
edition of 500
Purchasable with gift card
$15USDor more
Streaming + Download
Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Expanded LP release of "Rare Dreams: Solar Live 2.27.18" with an initial pressing of 300 on red vinyl.
***Recommendation for UK/EU buyers: please pre-order from your preferred local indie shop or mail order to avoid high shipping costs.
Includes unlimited streaming of Rare Dreams: Solar Live 2.27.18
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
Sold Out
about
On February 27, 2018, Chris Forsyth & The Solar Motel Band (comprised, in this iteration, of longtime SMB bassist Peter Kerlin and Kerlin’s Sunwatchers battery mate Jason Robira on drums) were close to wrapping up an 18-date tour of the EU and UK with a two-set, one hour and 45 minute show at Cafe Oto, London’s premier venue for adventurous music. Highlights of that show are included in this live release, RARE DREAMS: SOLAR LIVE 2.27.18, recorded before a packed house seated mere feet from the band’s amplifiers. These recordings reveal a band that is clearly in high spirits and high gear, operating with an expansive, improvisatory fleetness that allows them to stretch the material to almost ludicrous extremes and then let it to snap back to some semblance of form while somehow seemingly never wasting a note, a beat, a gesture. The four tracks included here comprise material culled from (at the time) the two most recent Solar Motel Band records DREAMING IN THE NON-DREAM (No Quarter, 2017) and THE RARITY OF EXPERIENCE (No Quarter, 2016) plus covers of two Neil Young songs - the autobiographical plaint “Don’t Be Denied,” lyrically relocated by Forsyth from Young's evocations of Canada and Hollywood to the more personally relevant geography of New Jersey and Philadelphia, and encore “Barstool Blues” (they’d run out of material to play, so another Neil Young tune it was). While the covers establish Forsyth’s basis, serving as an homage to Young and the quest for self-realization, the long tracks’ jams showcase the trance-inducing power of the Solar Motel Band as a performing entity. Kerlin’s gymnastically propulsive bass playing locks in with Robira’s relentless thud, each serving as counterpoint to some of the most blistering guitar work of Forsyth’s career. The telepathically dynamic interplay of the trio explodes with whiplash intensity across the 15-plus minute takes of “Dreaming In The Non-Dream” and “The First 10 Minutes of Cocksucker Blues,” each song’s structure serving as a framework for extended lava flows of energy. At one point late in the “Dreaming” jam, Forsyth unplugs the jack from his guitar, dragging it across the strings and lashing the body of his single-pickup “parts" Esquire, producing a desiccated barrage of percussive static. This is music beyond the notes; it is an expression of pure electric ecstasy, a simultaneous negation and celebration of rock music’s (indeed all musics’) essential energy. In contrast to the expansive but meticulously detailed guitar arrangements of his recordings, here Forsyth’s unhinged live guitar sound positively roars with a barely restrained vocal intensity, from liquid melodic lines to gnarled blasts of free jazz scree, to pulsating lead/rhythm vamping. I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing this band up close for an number of years now and I can authoritatively attest that while every show is different, when the SMB is running down a steep hill at full speed (as on these takes), they become a single leaderless vibrating sonic tornado, possibly beyond the control and logic of the players themselves, picking up listeners along the way and taking them along for the ride straight into a solar furnace of sound. - Jerome Onfront, Philadelphia
Recorded live at Cafe OTO, London on February 27, 2018
Multitrack recording by James Dunn
Mixed by Jeff Zeiger
Mastered by James Plotkin
OTO chalkboard text/drawing by Zara Miller and Patrick Dahn
Band photo by Mark Dershowitz
Layout by Darryl Norsen
A Brucie Millions Production
Without whom: Maria, Lee, Mike Quinn, Kevin Monty, John Allen, Ricky at Swamp Booking, and everyone at Cafe OTO.
“...a scrappy and mystical historian… His music humanizes the element of control in rock classicism (and) turns it into a
woolly but disciplined ritual.”
-NY Times
“...a near-perfect balance between 70s rock tradition and present day experimentation,”
-Pitchfork
“...one of rock’s most lyrical guitar improvisors,”
-NPR Music
supported by 193 fans who also own “The First 10 Minutes of Cocksucker Blues (Live @ Cafe OTO)”
I really liked "Cosmic Cash" a lot but this album is even better. Eight out of twelve tracks are on heavy rotation in my playlists. Papa Jay (Radio Smorgasbord)
Twitchy, effects-heavy post-punk grooves give way to psychedelic surf-rock delirium on the Toronto quartet's dreamy-yet-doomy second LP. Bandcamp New & Notable Jan 25, 2024
The Brooklyn band deliver a blissful psychedelic rock album steeped in sci-fi and spirituality, awash with organs, strings, and reverb. Bandcamp New & Notable Jun 23, 2021
supported by 157 fans who also own “The First 10 Minutes of Cocksucker Blues (Live @ Cafe OTO)”
Bright gray sheets of roaring and shimmering guitar held aloft by a delicate web of percussion. Post-rock, shoegaze, psych- rock and hints of bluesy folk, all audible and enmeshed. IlsaJ
