Basic (Robert Quine and Fred Maher album)

Robert Quine and Fred Maher were figures on the avant-new wave and punk funk scenes in New York City, and these roots are evident on Basic. Both had been members of Richard Hell and the Voidoids, before leaving to join Lou Reed's backing band, featuring together on Reed's album Live in Italy (1984) and striking a friendship. Though Quine was still touring with Reed by the recording of Basic, The guitarist had earlier collaborated with Jody Harris on an album, Escape (1981), which Quine taped on his four-track recorder; Quine says that the genesis for Basic was similar, as someone he met at E.G. Records through Brian Eno asked him to make another record; he told her "Someone's got to come over and pressure me to do it." According to Quine, the "key difference" between Escape and Basic is that, whereas Escape was heavily influenced by Miles Davis, Basic was inspired by much of Eno's ambient work, especially the textures of Ambient 4: On Land (1982). The guitarist had met Eno in 1978 and intended to collaborate on one of his rock albums before the latter abandoned the project and initiated his ambient direction. Quine nonetheless said that the experience allowed him to experience Eno's studio approach, which strongly affected him. "What he taught me about echo and sound and approaching recording was amazing. I'd have a digital delay, an analog delay, and a tape echo with the guitar running through them, and he'd start playing with them and come up with outrageous things. One thing he taught me was that analog delays and cheap tape echoes approximate the sound of a natural echo more closely than digital delays, which are too clean. See, when a natural echo bounces back, there's going to be all kinds of high-end loss. Things like that are what intrigue me right now." ==Recording==

Quine and Maher produced Basic together, with engineering by Mario Salvati. Quine had previously recorded Escape in his living room, and retained the location because "if someone covers over and you have a fruitless day, you haven't wasted any money. That happened plenty of times. One day, something'll happen and I'll go into a trance." (pictured in 2015). The instrumentation consists of electric guitars, bass guitars and programmed drums. Quine described the general recording process of the pieces as often initiating when he thought of specific drum beats to relay to Maher, which the pair would then record the basic tracks for, containing "drum machine, Fred on bass and sometimes guitar, and me. Then we might do an overdub pass, and that would be it. The way things fit together would be just as much a surprise to me as to anybody, which is nice, but scary." Although Basic is a guitar-based album, Maher was less experienced than Quine in this regard, having only played guitar for three years; instead, he had been a drummer for twelve years. Quine used the recording to "put all [his] influences" into a project, and utilised 16-seconds delays, and a four-track Teac Portastudio, the latter of which the guitarist admired as "there's no planning, no mapping things out, no nest of cables. You can pretty much just do it. That way, if the music works, it really works — and if it doesn't work, it really doesn't work. That's how I like it." To achieve the sounds he desired, Quine drew heavily on Eno's approaches to echo and delay. The influence of Eno was also reflected in the simplicity of the recording, with Quine deciding that, for many of the tracks on Basic, adding a guitar solo on top would be distracting: "That's why I called it Basic — they're the basic tracks. Even though it sounds like a lot of guitars on 'Bandage Bait', for instance, that was just two tracks, live." Specifically, the title emerged when the duo were building the tracks, doing the drum programming and 'ambient things'; for "Stray", Quine said he initially contributed a guitar solo, "but then I listened the next day and decided to leave it alone. Even if they don't sound anything like Eno, the Eno influence is what caused me to leave a lot of those tracks alone. They're basic tracks with the textures already there." The completed recording was mixed at Sorcerer Sound. ==Composition==

Musical style Basic is an album of highly improvised instrumentals centred on guitar, bass and drums. and was described by Quine as the result of listening to Miles Davis' "He Loved Him Madly" (1974) for "thousands of hours — I'm not exaggerating. The way things in '65' are floating, the way the guitars hover and barely resolve, then go to another place, the way it's spliced together — that's the feel I got from Miles." Quine considered it his favourite track on the album, and "one of the best things I've ever done in my life", adding that it "reflects how I feel about music with that Lester Young thing with the sadness." "Bandage Bait", as with "Fala" and "'65", showcases Quine's distinctive stylized guitar work. Sartwell deems "Dark Place" to be "an exercise in mere noise." "Despair" has been described as "an acid-blues against a Frippertronic drone and electro-beat", and contains a Frank Zappa-esque, wah-wah-style guitar sound. Discussing the track's name and abrupt ending, Quine noted: "I was pushing this Systech overdrive pedal — a very strange fuzz box that has an EQ control to get these nasal sounds — through an Electro-Harmonix Memory Man delay and into a [Tristech] Tube Cube, which is basically a direct box with a feature that says 'overdrive,' but actually tunes in natural harmonics on top, almost like an [Aphex] Aural Exciter." The guitarist was bemused by his playing and abandoned the piece to answer the telephone which he could hear through his headphones. Maher returned the next day and convinced him the song was worthy of including on the album. "Village" features a languid tune contrasting with a juggernaut rhythm, and its intro has been dubbed an example of "Hawaiian Ambient". ==Release==

Released in July 1984, Basic was one of two albums – the other being Hans-Joachim Roedelius' Geschenk des Augenblicks – Gift of the Moment – to be released on E.G. Records since they began a new distribution deal with the Cartel network, in order to bring their album catalogue to a wider array of specialist shops. After its release, Quine called it the only recording of his that he could bear to listen to, later saying: "If people don't appreciate the damn thing, I have no interest in banging my head against the wall." ==Critical reception==

According to writer Bill Milkowski in 1986, both Escape and Basic "have been heralded by critics for their inventiveness and overall vision." Nonetheless, Matthew Blackwell of Pitchfork reflects: "Few people understood Basic when it came out and even fewer liked it." She adds that despite the energetic, tense sound, the album "works up a powerful nervous sweat", using a "Lower East Side lingua franca I'd recommend. Reviewers for CMJ New Music Report opined that the best tracks spotlight "the distinctive resiliency of Quine's stylized guitar" and asserted that listeners of the album will "discover that much can happen with very little." Montreal newspaper The Gazette included Basic in their list of the 45 best albums of 1984. Retrospectively, AllMusic's David Szatmary deems Basic to be a "studied, tempered showcase" for Quine's "tasty guitar licks" and Maher's able backings. ==Legacy==

named Basic among his favourite albums. Basic was one of several mid-1980s albums recorded by collaborative duos working with drum machines and incorporating heavy overdubbing, alongside Fred Frith's and Henry Kaiser's Who Needs Enemies? (1983), Andy Summers' and Robert Fripp's Bewitched (1984) and Bill Frisell's and Vernon Reid's Smash & Scatteration (1985); Milkowski believes that Quine and Maher's project "had the distinct advantage" over the other albums because of Maher's skills as a drummer as well as guitarist. Quine and Maher subsequently worked on other projects together in the 1990s, collaborating on albums by Lloyd Cole, and Suzanne Rhatigan. Lou Reed described Basic as one of his current favourite albums in a 1984 interview in The Pittsburgh Press. Philadelphia guitarist Chris Forsyth has been influenced by the album, particularly on "Techno Top" from All Time Present (2019) and the album This Is BASIC (2024), the latter a tribute to Basic recorded with fellow guitarist Mick Millevoi and Natural Information Society percussionist Mikel Patrick Avery. However, in Pitchfork, Blackwell writes that although the album's sounds – its mix of "programmed drums, ambient drift, and indulgent guitar explorations" – were outré in 1984, they "quickly became dated." In 1997, Quine commented on the album's unpopularity: "People say 'you should put five or six records a year'. Just ask them 'What's your favorite track off Basic?' and they just look at me. There's very few people who like those records." ==Track listing==

All tracks written by Fred Maher and Robert Quine. ;Side one • "Pickup" – 5:18 • "Bluffer" – 5:48 • "Fala" – 3:53 • "Stray" – 3:49 • "Summer Storm" – 4:04 ;Side two • "65" – 6:00 • "Bandage Bait" – 6:11 • "Dark Place" – 2:34 • "Despair" – 4:18 • "Village" – 7:42 ==Personnel==

Adapted from the liner notes of Basic • Robert Quine – guitar, bass guitar, drum machine, production • Fred Maher – guitar, bass guitar, drum machine, production • Mario Salvati – mixing • Greg Calbi – mastering • Marcia Resnick – photography, design ==References==