"Because I was a teenager in Brazil in the '60s, I thought it was part of the purpose of pop music to change people's consciousness and spread information. In the '60s, Brazilian pop was aware of many other styles. Brazil was to the side, not in the middle of everything. People loved all kinds of music - from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones to Brazilian folk to avant garde music like John Cage to serialism to 20th century classical music."
Arto Lindsay, quoted in The Wire

An American who grew up in Brazil during the heyday of that country's pointedly eclectic Tropicália movement of the 1960s, Arto Lindsay has made a lifelong habit of crossing borders, musically as well as geographically. From his late '70s work with noise architects DNA through his series of bossa nova-influenced albums in the late '90s, Lindsay has fused rhythms, melodies, and verbal expressions from several cultures and genres in provocative new ways, crafting inimitable soundscapes whose impact can range from fragile pop pleasure to sheer sonic assault.

His collaborators are literally all over the map: German theater director Heiner Muller, Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, American multidisciplinary artist Vito Acconci, British producer/conceptualist Brian Eno. It was Eno who included several DNA tracks on the notorious 1978 four-band sampler No New York, which first brought international (albeit underground) attention to Lindsay and his cohorts. Critic Lester Bangs admiringly described the trio's screamed vocals and speaker-shredding guitar as "horrible noise", and the group's influence can be heard in the work of Sonic Youth, DJ Spooky, and countless young rock experimentalists of the next two decades. While few listeners noticed at the time, Lindsay and his bandmates were already inserting Portuguese phrases in their lyrics and alluding to Brazilian drumming patterns, "but it was all so garbled nobody could really tell," he recalled nearly 20 years later in a Pulse! Magazine interview.

Lindsay remained a key figure in the looseknit downtown Manhattan cultural scene throughout the 1980s, playing with the Lounge Lizards and the Golden Palominos, producing tracks for performance  artist Laurie Anderson, collaborating with John Zorn, contributing lyric translations to several compilations of Brazilian music on David Byrne's label Luaka Bop, even making a cameo appearance in director Susan Seidelman's Desperately Seeking Susan. With keyboardist Peter Scherer he founded the Ambitious Lovers, recording three albums (Lust, Greed, and Envy) in which, Lindsay now says, "we tried to put it all together; by the mid-to-late '80s we were trying to incorporate Brazilian, experimental, funk, R&B, and soul styles in our music. We were intentionally trying to write some catchy pop songs, because we've always loved catchy pop music."

In the 1990s, Lindsay's critical reputation earned him the opportunity to work with many of the figures who first influenced him as a teenager; he has produced recordings by Tropicália giants Caetano Veloso, Vinicius Cantuária, Gal Costa, and Carlinhos Brown (in addition to third-generation Tropicalista Marisa Monte and one of Byrne's solo releases), and has cowritten songs with Veloso and Cantuária. A 1999 New York Times article on the legacy of the Tropicália movement hailed these works as "the finest Brazilian pop albums of the past dozen years." During the same period, Lindsay embarked on a series of solo releases - O Corpo Sutil/The Subtle Body, Mundo Civilizado, Noon Chill, and the new album Prize - in which he continues to explore bossa nova and samba song structures on his own terms. Meanwhile, the edgier guitar style which earned him notice in the early part of his career lives on, as evidenced by the album Aggregates 1-25 (Knitting Factory Works, 1995) and a hidden track at the end of Noon Chill, as well as concert appearances in New York, Europe, and Japan. On yet a third front, Lindsay has invited a variety of younger artists, many of them drawn from New York's "illbient" scene (including DJ Spooky, DJ Soul Slinger, and Sub Dub) to "wreck", "recycle", and "rebottle" songs from his recent solo albums on accompanying remix discs, thus passing along the tradition of constant musical reinvention from one generation to the next.

Biography courtesy of Righteous Babe Records
PO box 95, Ellicott Station, Buffalo, NY 14205
tel. +1 716 8528020, fax +1 716 8522741, e-mail: RBRinfo@aol.com  

DISCOGRAPHY

Solo Records

Prize - Righteous Babe Records (US/Canada); Avex (Japan); Ryko (UK/Europe) - October 1999
Why Compare (vynil only compiltation) - Bar None - September 1999
Reentry EP - Güt/For Life Records (Japan) - December 1997
Noon Chill - Güt/For Life Records (Japan) - September 1997
                    Bar None Records (US/Canada); Ryko (UK/Europe) 1998
Hyper Civilizado (remix record) - Güt/For Life Records (Japan) 1996
                                                       Gramavision Records (US/UK/Europe)  - 1997
Mundo Civilizado - Güt/For Life Records (Japan) - 1996
                                           Bar None Records (US/Canada); Ryko (UK/Europe) 1997
O Corpo Sutil (The Subtle Body) - Güt/For Life Records (Japan) - 1995
                                                          Bar None Records (US/Canada); Ryko (UK/Europe) 1996
Aggregates 1-25 - Knitting Factory Works 1995

Ambitious Lovers

Lust - Elektra Records
Greed - Virgin Records
Envy - E.G. Records

DNA

No New York (produced by Brian Eno) - Island Records
A Taste of DNA - American Clave (Rough Trade)
Live at CBGB - Avant (Japan only)
You and you b/w Little Ants - Lust/Unlust Records

Lounge Lizards

Lounge Lizards (produced by Teo Macero) - E.G. Records

Golden Palominos

The Golden Palominos - Rough Trade

Arto Lindsay and DJ Spooky: Form and Function (10'') - Manifold Records
Arto Lindsay and Seth Tillet: Pini Pini
Arto Linsday with Heiner Goebbels and Heiner Muller:Man in the Elevator
Arto Linsday with Peter Scherer: Pretty Ugly,Crammed Disc
With John Zorn: Locus Solus, Cobra
With Gontiti:  Templo (track) , Hipland Music (Japan)

PRODUCER CREDITS

Ilê Aiyê-25 Anos (Natasha Records, Brazil) 1999
Avion Travel (Sugar Records, Italy) 1998
Caetano Veloso (Natasha Records) Orfeu Soundtrack 1998
David Byrne - David Byrne (Warner Bros.) 1994
David Byrne & Marisa Monte - The Waters of March (track), Red Hot and Rio (Polygram) 96
Marisa Monte - Barulhinho Bom (double live w/video), EMI 1996
Marisa Monte - Mais, EMI
Marisa Monte - Cor de Rosa e Carvao (Rose and Charcoal), EMI
Ana Torroja (title t/b/a, 2000. BMG Spain) co-prod. by Andres Levin
Caetano Veloso - Circulado, Polygram
Caetano Veloso - O Estrangeiro, Polygram
Vinicius Cantuária - Sol Na Cara, For Life/Rykodisc, 1997 (co-production)
Carlinhos Brown - Delabel/Virgin (co-production) France 1996
Waldemar Bastos - Pretaluz, Luaka Bop 1997
UA - Your No Kaze (track), Speedstar/Victor, Japan 1998
Taeko Onuki - Lucy, Toshiba/EMI, Japan 1997 selected tracks
Taro Hakase - Watashi, Epic/Sony Japan, 1997
Miki Nakatani - For Life Records, Japan 1996
Laurie Anderson - track from Strange Angels, Warner Bros. 1990
Gal Costa - O Sorriso de Gato de Alice, BMG
Bill Frisell - Before We Were Born, Nonesuch

BALLET SCORES

Amanda Miller - Frankfurt Ballet
- Pretty Ugly
- No Wild Ones
- The Hermit and the Navigator
- Two Pears

DIRECTOR CREDITS

A Tribute to Carmen Miranda -
                   Brooklyn Academy of Music, Next Wave Festival
Vito Acconci - Performance collaboration, The Kitchen - NYC

ACTOR CREDITS

Desperately Seeking Susan dir. By Susan Siedelman
Cosla dir. By Susan Siedelman

LYRICS FOR:

Ryuichi Sakamoto
Towa Tei
Caetano Veloso
Djavan
Jazz Passengers
Angel Fernandez
Bill Frisell

TEXTS FOR JOHN ZORN

Hu Die
Spillane
Hoydini/De Sade

Discographical information courtesy  of Music and Art Management
245 West 14th Street #2rc, New York, NY 10011 (USA)
tel. +1 212 8071950, fax +1 212 8071952, e-mail: musicart@interport.net