Bright

Bright (originally Heroine), a band from Massachusetts, debuted with Bright (Ba Da Bing, 1996), which contains instrumental pieces infused with progressive-rock and psychedelia (Canal, Redefine, Elting 1901). The original influence of Stereolab is moderated by a kindred spirit of the late Sonic Youth. The sung parts slightly lower the average of a record that is otherwise a delight of counterpoint.

The Albatross Guest House (Ba Da Bing, 1997) contains material recorded between 1993 and 1996 by guitarist Mark Dwinell and drummer Joe LaBrecque. The album shows their most visceral and passionate side, both more experimental, bordering on free-jazz, and more convoluted, bordering on the German school of Can, Faust and Neu.

Blue Christian (Darla, 1999) is the first chance the duo gets at dilating their structures. Mini-suites like Tapping and Grand Mal take advantage fully of the expanded medium and prove that Bright is even more skilled than the song-oriented pieces hinted.

Full Negative (Ba Da Bing, 2000) resorts to a more abrasive and dissonant stance. Lead-off track Heart Of The Park shows their debt to shoegazing.

After a hiatus of five years, Dwinell and LaBrecque resurrected Bright as a duo and recorded Bells Break Their Towers (strange Attractors, 2005).

Nonloc (Ba Da Bing, 2003) is the solo project of former Bright frontman Mark Dwinell, helped out by a handful of friends who play violin, cello, viola and percussion.

On Nonloc's Between Hemispheres (Strange Attractors, 2007) Mark Dwinell played all instruments by himself. Dwinell harks back to the minimalist avantgarde of the 1970s (Steve Reich, Terry Riley), except that he revises it for the quintessential folk and rock instrument, the guitar, adding manipulated sounds of other instruments for coloring. His brief minimalist sonatas (Corpus Callosum, The Golden Apple Pie, A Popular Tune, Clearing) try different routes to create self-sustaining patterns. But Dwinell's aim is not to compose instrumental experiments. He uses that framework of guitar repetition as the skeleton for songs with lyrics: Candide, Sentry at Eleusis, and especially Lost in the Desert, Near Death (with strings reminiscent of Michael Nyman). The last two tracks do not quite fit in the concept, as if they belonged to another album: the trance-y six-minute elegy Two Dreams, and the six-minute instrumental guitar droning crescendo of Between Hemispheres. They are also the two that truly capture one's attraction, because of both the original structure and the psychological tension.