Arto Lindsay

by John Dougan and Sean Westergaard
After his tenure as guitarist in the great no wave band DNA and punk-jazzers the Lounge Lizards, Arto Lindsay formed the equally exciting and (pun intended) ambitious Ambitious Lovers, while also being involved with the earliest incarnations of the Golden Palominos. Lindsay, a native of Brazil, began conflating the Brazilian pop music of his youth with the sonic density and avant-garde urgings he pursued as a member of the Lower East Side noise rock scene. As a result, his recordings as leader of the Ambitious Lovers are not all atonal skronk, but rather a deft blend of dance-pop and sonic adventurousness. With inestimable help from keyboardist and Ambitious Lover co-conspirator Peter Scherer, the first Ambitious Lovers release, Envy, retains more of a dissonant edge, and as such doesn't seem too far removed from Lindsay's days with DNA. The next record, Greed (noticing a pattern developing here?), was a slick, ebullient pop record that sounded like a direct descendent of the Brazilian pop recorded by giants such as Jorge Ben, Caetano Veloso, and Gilberto Gil. With plenty of up-tempo, danceable tracks, the noisy undercurrent was downplayed perhaps a bit more than noisemeisters would like, but the resulting album was nearly flawless. As was its follow-up, Lust, which, true to its title, was a touch more salacious, and undeniably great modern pop music. Although they don't sell records in the millions (or the hundreds of thousands for that matter), the Ambitious Lovers are one of the few bands to live up to their name record after record. Following Ambitious Lovers, Lindsay became more involved with Brazilian music, working on albums by such Brazilian luminaries as Marisa Monte, Joao Gilberto, Gal Costa and Tom Zé. In the mid 90's, he began issuing albums under his own name, starting with Aggregates 1-26 on the Knitting Factory label. This album was more of a return to DNA-type skronk, but after switching to Bar None for his next album Mundo Civilizado, the Brazilian influence was back, along with more prominent electronica elements. After several releases on Bar None, Lindsay became the first artist to release an album on Ani Difranco's Righteous Babe label (besides Ani herself, that is), beginning with The Prize. Invoke was released in 2002, followed by Salt in 2004, all dispaying his special synthesis of Brazilian music with the downtown avant-garde.