Unsung Stories from Lilly's Days as a Solar Astronaut, by Jonathan Badger

Unsung Stories from Lilly's Days as a Solar Astronaut

by Jonathan Badger

supported by

Alloy: A Mixture of Jazz and Progressive Music thumbnail

	/

Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

$5 USD or more
Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
For UK orders, please go to www.burningshed.com/store/altrock/product/128/2393/

You'll get the disc much faster that way.

ships out within 2 days

Purchasable with gift card

$7 USD or more

1.	The Vessel Megalo 06:08	info	buy track
2.	The First Time I Dreamt of the Surface There Was No One to Hold 01:42	info	buy track
3.	Her Eyes in Sunflare 05:04	info	buy track
4.	His Face Like Glass to the Touch 04:37	info	buy track
5.	Aria7 03:20	info	buy track
6.	Beat 1 05:06	info	buy track
7.	they searched for each other In the Shelter of Mercury (free) 03:36	info	download
8.	Neurosmith 05:14	info	buy track
9.	The Insight That Comes From Repeated Time Dilations 05:36	info	buy track
10.	Surface 06:50	info
11.	Lucius 04:23	info	buy track

about

Aside from having one of the best titles in recent memory, Jonathan Badger’s Unsung Stories from Lilly’s Days as a Solar Astronaut is a challenging but ultimately rewarding disc that slams together an avant-rock mindset equipped with weapons-grade guitar bursts, an intriguing electronic setup and a compositional sensibility that’s largely improvisation-based. Badger has developed a system that augments his live guitar structures with laptop-selected sound samples and loops triggered not just by what he’s playing, but how it’s being played. Mellotron tape loops are also controlled by the guitar’s MIDI output.

It’s easy to overlook the electronic side of things, however, when the first angry, feral guitar chords of “The Vessel Megalo” rip the air wide open in front of you and drums slam out an angry backbeat. At that point it feels almost like it’s going to be a straightforward, hard instrumental CD. That’s one of the draws of Unsung Stories… for me: the way Badger manages to maintain the structural familiarity of that rock feel while crashing it at speed into the forward-thinking subversion of a compositional approach unfettered by convention.

Throughout the disc, Badger uses that subversion to unseat the comfort we take in a melody by twisting and roughening it. It makes us stop listening passively and start looking actively at what’s being done so that we can try to understand. Listen to the way an established rhythm breaks down, regroups and rebuilds over and over in “Beat 1″ as fingerboarded guitar squares off against a chipset-like riff that mimics it. Or the way Badger takes the almost-baroque simplicity of a piano and flute duet in “His Face Like Glass to the Touch” and drops in a wayward fuzzy guitar, disjointed snipped vocal samples and a battery of processing and filtering changes, forcing the basic tune to continually work to return to its original state. “Surface” is about the most straight-up track here, boasting a guitar riff that fell out of a Sergio Leone western, but even here Badger runs a serratred electric wire around and through it to try to draw focus away while at the same time requiring the listener to focus more. In each track, while the intent of the thing remains, its appearance is in near-constant flux, bending toward unrecognizability and thus our perception of and understanding of it changes as well. . . Badger’s complexity makes me want to listen deeper, to more fully take in the experience.

The packaging of this disc is also worth calling out. The inside of the case is strewn with what appear to be random old clippings from books and newspapers. Look at them carefully, though -- the text on each pertains in some way to the titular Lilly and her days as…well, you get it. It’s an interesting way to add a depth of narrative that goes beyond the music. It serves to invest you a bit more in the concept. Well done.

When you’re ready to think about your music, listen to Unsung Stories from Lilly’s Days As A Solar Astronaut. The reward is very much worth the effort.

Available from Jonathan Badger’s website or MT6 Records.

John Shanahan
Hypnagogue
August 10, 2010

credits

released March 24, 2010

MT6 Records, 2010

license

about

Jonathan Badger / High Horse Productions image

Jonathan Badger / High Horse Productions Baltimore

High Horse Productions is an outlet for the work of Jonathan Badger. Projects include Antler, All the Clouds Turn to Words, Lake Mallory, as well as solo work by JB.

jonathanbadger.com

contact / help

Contact Jonathan Badger / High Horse Productions

Streaming and
Download help

Shipping and returns

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Unsung Stories from Lilly's Days as a Solar Astronaut, you may also like:

Along a Vanishing Plane
by Christopher Tignor

An album written to help listeners find peace in a noisy world, “Along a Vanishing Plane” delivers on its promise. Bandcamp Album of the Day Oct 11, 2016
go to album
synth waltzes and accordion laments
by Yara Asmar

As the title implies, the latest from Lebanese artist Yara Asmar combines ambient synths with treated accordion in dreamlike songs. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 31, 2023
go to album
Frontal
by Illusion of Safety

A collection of unreleased material from Daniel Burke's beloved experimental project, spanning four decades of loud, off-kilter weirdness. Bandcamp New & Notable Jun 21, 2023
go to album
Images
by Colin Andrew Sheffield

Colin Andrew Sheffield (Elevator Bath) repurposes heavily manipulated jazz samples into gorgeously eerie soundscapes. Bandcamp New & Notable Jun 20, 2023
go to album
Cataclysmic System Binding Loss
by Carbon In Prose

Shards of static & distortion crash against disarmingly beautiful piano & synth melodies on this riveting new record from Carbon and Prose. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 30, 2022
go to album
Home Recordings 2018 - 2021
by Yara Asmar

Lebanese multi-instrumentalist deconstructs classical tropes through an eccentric array of instruments, including disassembled toy pianos. Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 22, 2022
go to album
BFHC
by Lina Filipovich

From the always-great label Umor Rex comes the latest from Lina Filipovich: A ruthless deconstruction of classical pieces. Bandcamp New & Notable Jul 25, 2022
go to album