BASIC began when Philadelphians Chris Forsyth and Nick Millevoi spent some of their COVID downtime talking about records. Among their common shared affections were the early recordings of the Durutti Column and Basic, a one-off collaboration between guitarist Robert Quine and drummer/programmer Fred Maher. Gabbing begat jamming, with Forsyth playing electric guitar and Millevoi on baritone guitar and drum machines. That’s when things got serious.
The duo developed a set of brittle, propulsive instrumentals that dosed their inspirations with a jolt of extra urgency and started playing them around town. Millevoi and Forsyth didn’t need to spend much time with the material for before they realized that their intentionally basic sound concept could benefit from another pair of hands. They chose wisely; not only is Mikel Patrick Avery (Natural Information Society, Paul Giallorenzo Trio, Rob Mazurek) singularly gifted at making locked-in rhythmic matrixes swing, he’s a drummer who designs guitar effects pedals for fun. He added a layer of subtle percussive coloration to Millevoi’s programs, and that’s what the trio took into the studio.
The six tracks on This Is BASIC are unmistakably imprinted by a certain era’s sounds. The mid-‘80s tops the list; the programmed drum clatter and clap, the syndrums boing out of their patterns like sonic Superballs, and the treble on the guitar tones is sharp enough to give you a close shave. But you can’t lock down the collective imagination of a trio of highly self-educated music heads, so there are also some passages that sound like someone turned the punchline to a record-collector joke into a really good idea. If Tom Verlaine had collaborated with Michael Rother, the result might well have sounded like “New Auspicious.” And if Miles Davis’ Agharta band had time-traveled ahead a decade, gotten locked in a studio and been told that they had to come up with a dancehall reggae track to pay their way back home, they might have come up with something like “Versatile Switch.”
With the record done, BASIC is about to hit the road, but Millevoi won’t be along for the ride. He has new music of his own to develop, so Douglas McCombs (Tortoise, Brokeback, Eleventh Dream Day) will take his place. Forsyth’s discography has examples of both his commitment to nurturing ideas over the long haul and his willingness to move on, so it remains to be seen whether this record is the whole story or the trio will advance to some new phase. Either way, This Is BASIC attests to the merits of seeing how far an idea can go. [No Quarter]
—Bill Meyer
