Description
It only took 23 years but the first long-playing record by The Chinese Restaurants is finally here. The Chinese Restaurants is the long-term partnership founded in 1996 by artists LF Restaurant (a.k.a. Richard Papiercuts) and Keith Restaurant.
The duo follows three core principles: (1) Never rehearse; (2) Never discuss what you do; (3) Never do the same thing twice. Over the years, LF and Keith have performed with a revolving cast of friends and fellow players, including erstwhile members of Broken Talent, Country Teasers, Billy Bao, and Rocket No. 9.
Instant Music is a concise monograph of the project’s many facets and contradictions, spanning free improvisation, reductionism, Third Stream, primitive rock, punk aesthetics, non-cochlear sound, plastic soul, and ASMR hypnotics in just under 30 minutes.
The six-song LP was conceived, recorded, and mixed over three days in the group’s spiritual home of Bridgeport, Connecticut, where they were joined by longtime friend and associate Malcolm Restaurant and jazz reedsman Erik Elligers.
The tracks apparently consist of spontaneously composed first takes, overlaid with improvised overdubs and mixed in a single afternoon. The only previously performed song on the record is “LFO,” a rudimentary blues that first entered the band’s repertoire in 1997 and is here given an expansive treatment in the style of Philip Cohran or the 1970s Arkestra.
The record comes packaged is an exquisite gatefold that offers clues to the Restaurants’ process and their queasy, unsublimated relationship with visual art.
Limited edition, one-time pressing of 200 copies.
