Arto Lindsay - Music

Music

Although Lindsay was born in the United States, he spent many years in Brazil with his missionary parents and came of age during the influential Tropicália movement of Brazilian culture, which included musicians Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa, Os Mutantes and Gilberto Gil, as well as the visual artists Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clark and Antonio Dias. This time of cultural experimentation and artistic cross-pollination made an enduring impact on the young Lindsay.

In New York, Lindsay began his artistic ambitions as a writer, but quickly became interested in the art and music scenes that were evolving out of the New York punk rock scene at the time.

In the late 1970s, he co-formed the seminal no wave group DNA with Ikue Mori and Robin Crutchfield, although Tim Wright of Pere Ubu fame would soon replace Crutchfield. In 1978, DNA was featured on the four-band sampler No New York (produced by Brian Eno) which brought an early taste of international notoriety to the group, and which quickly became the essential document of No Wave. The famous rock critic Lester Bangs once described the group's ritualistic vocals, and deliberately primitive, speaker-shredding guitar as “horrible noise.”

In the early 1980s, Lindsay, and his particular style of guitar work, featured prominently in the early recordings of John Lurie's "fake jazz" outfit The Lounge Lizards and The Golden Palominos. These groups worked to break down distinctions between rock music, pop music, improvisation and avant-garde experimentalism. It was during this time that Lindsay established a collaborative friendship with John Zorn, playing in a number of his ensembles including Locus Solus.

After leaving the Lounge Lizards, Lindsay formed the Ambitious Lovers with keyboardist Peter Scherer. This music was decidedly more pop influenced and featured more prominent attention to Brazilian music, like samba and bossa nova. In an interview with BOMB magazine, Lindsay explained, "Listen to the Ambitious Lovers, the whole idea was Al Green and samba. That against this; this against that; a blend, a juxtaposition, loud/soft. There's no particular point in putting these things together. The point is what comes out in the end." Although their three albums, Greed, Envy, and Lust were Lindsay's first forays with a major record label, these albums genre-bending pop never caught on in the mainstream. The Ambitious Lovers disbanded in 1991, although Lindsay remained a strong working relationship with Scherer, and continued to record with him.

In the early 1990s. Lindsay began to rarefy his singing voice and launched a solo career which was significantly more oriented toward his Brazilian roots, singing in Portuguese more frequently, throwing in occasional covers of bossa nova classics like João Gilberto's "Este Seu Olhar", and updating his sound from 1980s new wave to more current types of electronica on albums such as O Corpo Sutil (The Subtle Body) (1996), Mundo Civilizado (1997), Noon Chill (1998), Prize (1999), Invoke (2002), and Salt (2004). These albums are unique in their reliance on collaboration between the musicians, producers and composers that Lindsay continues to work with; Lindsay has worked extensively with bassist Melvin Gibbs, guitarist Vinicius Cantuária, and producer Andres Levin to help create his sound.

Throughout the late 1980s and through the 1990s, Lindsay also composed a number of soundtracks, dance commissions and even continued to dabble in No Wave-influenced projects, most notably with the Arto Lindsay Trio, with Gibbs and Dougie Bowne, who released Aggregates 1-26 on the Knitting Factory label in 1995. He performed on the track "Counting the Roses," featured in the video game D2.

Over the years, Lindsay has lent his musical talents to – and collaborated with – such artists as: They Might Be Giants, David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, Alain Bashung, Marc Ribot, Cibo Matto, Bill Frisell, Animal Collective, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Krisma, and Kip Hanrahan, to name but a few.

In 1998, he collaborated with Arnaldo Antunes and Davi Moraes on the track "Sem Você" for the AIDS benefit compilation album Onda Sonora: Red Hot + Lisbon produced by the Red Hot Organization.

In 2004, he co-produced and played with Seb el Zin on the Anarchist Republic of Bzzz album, also featuring Marc Ribot, Mike Ladd and Sensational.