Fans of Neu, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine take heed: this is a sampler from a retropective of Chatham’s work spanning the 70’s-80’s. Chatham bridged the NYC art scene of John Cale/Tony Conrad with No Wave and experimental rock. He mentored luminaries such as Glen Branca (who mentored/introduced Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo founding members of Sonic Youth), and you hear elements of him in their music: chiming layers of guitars, melody through layers of dissonance, dedication to rhythm. Chatham’s music sounds more musical, not pushing the clanging dissonance as far as Branca/early SY did, pulling it together into more ethereal lush blankets of sound more along the lines of My Bloody Valentine. Proggy structures and Krautrock tones are present too, bringing to mind Neu, Trans Am, even Fripp/King Crimson. Comparisons aside, this is all really advanced stuff, all instrumental, heady, waaaay ahead of its time.

CD”2”
1) epic 4 minute intro which finally turns chiming poppy and upbeat, improv feel but not noodly jammy, after 14 min another major thematic shift, truly epic 21 minutes
2) military snare drum playing, marching, with simple horn melodies
3) driving, faster urgent beat, feel, strange clanging chiming tones, percussive No Wave feel appears later
4) super cool minor feel, epic, MBV drumming, from 1977
5) dissonant brass, heavy drums (no cymbals), really epic (again, that word)

CD”3”
1) long held notes with cymbal rides, like bow exchanges, as epic ~4 min intro to upbeat near proggy feeling space rock
2) halting, intense
3) upbeat near indie rock, pretty
4) trippy layers of guitar arpeggios, dissonant yet pretty, ebb and flow in an avante experimental fashion
5) trans am, long continuous jam