press
Praise for Lilly's Days
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
the greatness on this album comes from the synthesis of structures and sounds that Badger manages to achieve. This is an album sans genre, one that is good enough to stand alone on the mountaintop.
. . . in the finest traditions of modern composing.
Intricate yet dreamy compositions.
Scott Jones, Performer Magazine, February 2010
Splendid . . . engaging . . . entertaining . . .
Disagreement, March 2010
Praise for Metasonic
Badger’s equipment setup does Frippertronics proud; 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
Experimental guitar work, implementing a diverse palette with focus on temporal and rhythmic elements. Two minutes after the CD arrived it was in my player -- two more minutes to hear the first track -- and that was enough to see that this CD is interesting enough and needed to be heard . . . [T]he 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 becomes still and relaxed.
Powernet
Jonathan Badger . . . [has] 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’s 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. . . a really wonderful and a unique piece of art.
The Speed of Silence
[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