"The first thing you notice about Unsung Stories from Lilly's Days as a Solar Astronaut is its distinctive packaging, a cryptic collage overlaying a backdrop the color of faded parchment paper: ragged, Ralph Steadman-esque lettering interspersed with distressed typefaces, washed-out snapshots of a 1980s-era sedan and an unidentifiable action figure, aimless doodles, a gray cluster of evocative text clippings, and an image of a pair of open scissors. If your guess is that Unsung wouldn't be all sweetness and light—that its aching, emotional longing runs deep—award yourself a gold star.
This melancholic, mosaic record—the second from Baltimore-based aural alchemist Jonathan Badger—looks like a tragic scrapbook, and it sounds like one, too, even as its song titles splits the difference between blunt utilitarianism ("Aria 7") and desperate, depressive delusion ("They Searched for Each Other in the Shelter of Mercury"). Unsung shuffles nimbly between extremes of darkness and light the way an Olympic figure skater transitions from twirls and spins to highest-degree-of-difficulty Lutzes and axles, a suite of fluid, involving instrumentals that draws from disparate genres to arrive at a sort of post-ambient survey.
Badger's sonic palette can definitely inspire tinnitus: "Lucius" forces effects-driven, contact-mic'd-wasps-in-a-jar chicanery to play nice with Mogwai-lite gloaming, while "The Vessel Megalo" is all orchestral, noise-metal swing. "Aria 7" gently stipples downcast classical harmonies with static and micromorphed bongo-beat samples, then drops all of that in favor of starched electric ax sandblasts. A few tracks—namely the aforementioned "Mercury," which cries out to be set to an interpretive dance piece, and the hiccupping hospital-monitor drear of "Beat 1"—generate the kind of dissonant cross-currents that fool you into thinking that your cell phone is ringing near by.
Unsung is at its best when Badger really gets his Siberian-winter-of-our-discontent on. "His Face Like Glass to the Touch"—a modernist tone poem for piano, mellotron, and guitar that peers deeply into its own cracked mirror image—paints a spellbinding portrait of baroque-cum-prog unease, and "vocals" that have been drained of all humanity lend the piece an operatic cast. "The First Time I Dreamt of the Surface There Was No-One To Hold" shoves burbling, opaque electronics and sewing-machine stitched riffs through pregnant silences and gusts of string-section anguish that are abruptly cut short."
Raymond Cummings, Baltimore City Paper, March 4, 2010
"Experimental guitar work, implementing a diverse palette with focus on temporal & rhythmic elements.
Two minutes after the CD arrived was in my player, two more minutes to hear the first track, that was enough to see that this CD is interesting enough and need to be heard, that is why I am writing this one.
First of all the music can be considered as Ambient, but not that classical full of sounds ambient that we are used to. This music is calm and balanced, very clear and pure, simple as much as possible. That is the powerful combination that makes this work so nice! Listening to this CD your consciousness became still and relaxed, no other sound can bring your attention. The music has its own style that brings you in some magical but realistic world where you are calm and can collect your thoughts."
Radio Powernet November 28, 2006
"Badger's equipment setup does Frippertronics proud, wherein his guitar is a guitar as well as a synthesizer, loop generator, and sample trigger. His music openly adopts an "ambient" tag although there's definitely more rhythmic structure here. Badger frequently composes pieces—"Code," "Vault," "Egret"—that are beeping, rotating, floating rock'n'roll satellites, merging the tapped notes and chords of the late Michael Hedges with the technical arsenal behind Vernon Reid's six-string screams and whispers. More interesting, especially knowing one set of hands generated this work spontaneously, are the noises and notes that move beyond the guitar realm. The arrangements and tweaking of "Beat On" and "Magnetism" create a virtual string section; "Tremble" adds illusory hurdy-gurdy and muted horns while "Flame" evokes a field of nighttime crickets. The interlude "Old Spiders" may be Badger's technological zenith, an angular piece that evokes a large modern orchestra.
. . . Badger's work is too pleasing and—despite the absence of any overdubs—polished to ignore. (AB)"
e/i magazine March 17, 2007
". . . wonderful ambient music live, and using mostly incoherent pieces of gear, incorporating both primitive and modern equipment that's not necessarily designed or intended to go together. He's created beautiful and rich ambient tones, infused with rhythms by using subtle pulses which create an amazing soundscape that drives at a calm pace."Beat on" is my favorite track off of his new album, Metasonic. Metasonic was created solely on a single guitar, and ends up sounding nothing like a guitar at many points on the album. I love guys who can pull this off without sounding trite or repetitive. I'm really blown away that this whole album was created on guitar – there are parts that leave me puzzled, as I don't know how in the hell he gets some of the sounds out.
. . . This whole album was recorded live without any overdubs. Some parts of the album lead me to believe that it's a bit improvisational, but doesn't come off sounding confused at all. Overall the album is really wonderful and a unique piece of art."
Speed of Silence September 23, 2006
"[T]here is not the merest hint of a keyboard or drums, just the weird and (occasionally) wonderful sounds emanating from JB's guitar. . ."
Richard White - The Silent Ballet (Dec 18, 2006)
If you like what you hear, you can purchace the cd here
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metasonic is also available for download on eMusic and iTunes.
Jonathan Badger - Aria 7 from irrelevant on Vimeo.
