Composer/performer/instrument-builder Smith offers strangely beautiful and compelling soundscapes scored for his unique sound-sculptural instruments, steel guitar and electronics. Dan Warburton wrote in Paris Transatlantic, “Chas...

Composer/performer/instrument-builder Smith offers strangely beautiful and compelling soundscapes scored for his unique sound-sculptural instruments, steel guitar and electronics. Dan Warburton wrote in Paris Transatlantic, “Chas Smith's pedal steel and 12-string dobro are as evocative and quintessentially American as a crackling neon light outside a desert motel at sunset.” Dusted magazine called Descent Smith’s “most powerful and focused work yet.” The American Music Center’s NewMusicBox commented, “Listening to…Descent, is like sifting through space. It’s atmospheric and otherworldly, yet never stands still. Here and there are small craters and crescendos of electronic sound, and the harmonic landscape seems to suggest a tonic center, but then it slowly drifts into outer orbits to explore a much larger sound vocabulary.” And Signal to Noise magazine wrote, “Calling Smith’s instrumentation unusual is an absurd understatement. Aside from the familiar cry of his steel guitar, Descent’s three long pieces feature sounds produced by metal-based sculptural instruments (which he even names: Copper Box, Que Lastas, Pez Eater, and Jr. Blue) and a custom-built, three-neck steel guitar he calls Guitarzilla. Smith’s compositions are grandiose vistas teeming with twilight sonorities…. Though Descent's heaving masses may be alien in character, they're engrossing nonetheless.”