Arto Lindsay

No Wave pioneer Arto Lindsay has announced a new double LP exploring his solo recordings from the past decade and a live set recorded at Pete’s Candy Store in 2012. Due out May 20 through Northern Spy, Encyclopedia of Arto includes collaborations with Amedeo Pace (Blonde Redhead), Marisa Monte, Caetano Veloso, Andrés Levin, Melvin Gibbs and more, as well as covers of Prince, Al Green and the Brazilian music that’s long influenced the former DNA frontman. (While he’s best known for living in New York during its downtown era, Lindsay is based in Rio de Janeir0) — Andrew Parks, Wondering Sound

A rare kind of person, Arto Lindsay loves life just the way it is, a feature of his character which makes him Brazilian not only by place of birth. He walks the streets of Rio de Janeiro (where he lives), New York, Tokyo and Naples with the same funny step, with that mischievous good-hearted-rascal look under his little round glasses that has always allowed him to coexist with the greatest of ease amongst white noise and the most intimate of lullabies. It won’t be difficult to unearth the strongly sexed nature of the rhythmic / melodic structures of everything he has done in his 35 year-long career which, in this double album, is hinted at, glimpsed or, at times, elegantly omitted.On one hand there are gems that one might call “pop” from recent years and on the other, the live sauciness, the electric art brut style that actually redesigned the idea of the hated pomp rock soloing of those same 1970’s, throwing it towards the disintegration of whole pieces of abandoned space station seen/heard in ‘Gravity’ (the film). A good awakening for the ears, a brush up. Then, three seconds later, a ballad that’s as sweet as a fruit from Bahia. It’s the opposite of an analytical process: in the sonorous opera of Lindsay the subconscious doesn’t hide but is, instead, the tail of a naughty crabby cat to be pulled at out of spite. Rigorously post-colonial much earlier than the term was academically pronounced, rigorously modernist in embracing ‘the shock of the future’ without ever confusing it with the cancellation of previous stories, Arto has never worn the imperial arrogance of the nonetheless coeval no-New Yorkers and nor has he ever belonged to time of clock or calendar. This is why the necklace you are about to put on is made of differently cut and differently coloured dateless pearls and precious pendants and pieces of iron picked up off the road. Wonderful, unique.Arto: real, compassionate, dangling, always in an indefinite area between seduction and isolationism. Already a computer fanatic before the digital era which he belongs to de facto, having lived it before its time. Pure and fresh New Wave that, in him – as maybe in no other –, merges France with Cinema Novo and Gilles Deleuze with Carneval floats. Poetry. Beauty.

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