Chas Smith is a musician who has created his own unique musical world—complete with its own instruments and language—which has often been compared to that...

Chas Smith is a musician who has created his own unique musical world—complete with its own instruments and language—which has often been compared to that of Harry Partch and Harry Bertoia. Smith’s, however, is a world of expansive musical tapestries and carefully sculpted textures that evolve via a slow, constant change of aural perspective. Twilight of the Dreamboats, a quintessential Smith electro-acoustic work, is an ever-evolving single gesture, a seamless blend of tones and timbres from his metal sound sculptures and his homemade and hot-rodded steel guitars. A 25-minute CD EP/single. Fanfare magazine wrote of this CD, “I am receptive to Chas Smith's instrumentarium and also to his music. Like early Ligeti (and like Brian Eno), Smith appears to favor clouds of sound that drift, expand, contract, and change colors and intensities. Twilight of the Dreamboats is innocent of rhythm, melody, and conventional harmonic progress…and what a feeling it creates!… Its drones sweep over and around the listener like a storm front, making him or her feel insignificant. Oh God, thy metallic orchestra is so big and I am so small. Even so, as mighty as Twilight of the Dreamboats is, its mightiness seems benevolent…. As most recreational drugs are illegal and potentially dangerous, I recommend Twilight of the Dreamboats every night before bedtime.” And Julien Cowley wrote in The Wire, “Chromium dreamscapes seeping out from resonant metal sculptures and steel guitars…. Twilight Of The Dreamboats, an oneiric montage of metallic tones and floating haloes, sonically chilly and alien yet with a strange otherworldly allure reminiscent of paintings by surrealist Yves Tanguy.” And Textura wrote, Twilight of the Dreamboats is a thoroughly satisfying piece of music, a lustrous mass of shimmering textures and evolving tonalities that unfolds with an unhurried elegance. Like a storm cloud moving so slowly across the sky it verges on imperceptible, Smith’s streaked-with-lightning setting subtly advances and recedes as it breathes controlled metallic fire for twenty-five absorbing minutes.”