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Chris Forsyth All Time Present Record Release Show #2

CHRIS FORSYTH
The annals of music history are overflowing with gifted guitar players whose egos prevented them from reaching their full potential: rather than being content to be exceptional members of a band, they instead create unexceptional records as leaders in vain attempts to prove their worth as solo artists.

Guitarist-songwriter-bandleader Chris Forsyth is the rare exception that proves the rule. Rightfully but somewhat reductively known as a guitar player par excellence, one listen to Forsyths latest double album, All Time Present, reveals that while his dazzling musicianship can always be taken for granted, its hardly the whole story. Forsyths albumspresented with his Solar Motel Band or nominally solo, as herehave always been evidence of a musical mind brimming with ideas.

Though rock is its predominant melodic language, the music of Chris Forsyth contains multitudes; as an arranger, he has displayed over the course of his career an almost monomaniacal dedication to rhythm and dynamics.

All Time Present is the rare double album that goes by in a flash. Indeed, one of Forsyths greatest strengths as a composer and bandleader is his consistent ability to sustain interest even when at his most brazenly improvisational: he drifts, but he never meanders. On All Time Present, Forsyths particular drift is like that of a proverbial wallflower with a sudden surge of unselfconscious courage: toward the dance floor.