Music Review Featured in Chill Magazine Dec 2006

Anything but Sleep

by

Sarah Sala

• University student Chris Bathgate's music will resonate with you long after the amp is unplugged and you've pushed back your headphones.

• Self-classified as neo-folk, his songs are not to be heard while working or walking, but driving. His latest album, Throatsleep, will make you want to drive out past the lights of the city, seal yourself in the soundless space of your car and allow your chest to rise and fall in the comfortable words of a man who not only feels the swell of your sorrow, but was born to usher it into song.

• Bathgate rests his head at one of the most extraordinary living spaces in Ann Abor. One floor above Wazoo Records on State Street, Ann Arbor Vitae began as the architectural studio of the late Rich Ahern. With its twenty-three foot ceilings, loft spaces and large windows overlooking State Street, it's an amazing venue for shows. The Vitae is crowded with old architectural plans, bookshelves, instruments, fish tanks, plants, a cow skull and more hidden wonders than the discount bin at the Salvation Army, but most striking is its unique inhabitants.

• If Bathgate had it his way, his music would be filed under the slot marker "space-poetry fold with remnants of metal, American classical, bluegrass and blues," but for now, we'll just call it indie folk rock.

• Bathgate has opened for the likes of the Magnolia Electric Company, Great Lakes Swimmers, Nomo, Akrom Family, The Kills, and played shows in locales such as the Hamtramck Blowout, the Belmont, the Blind Pig and the Lager. While he is just back from playing three gigs in New York City, his dream is to someday play The Michigan Theater.

• Up coming from this artist in February is a box set entitled All That You Contain Is All That Will Remain, described as a "six (mini) disc set with fold out bits and a bunch of sweet photoplate prints." Only a hundred copies of these rerecorded songs will be released. The new full length album A Cork Tail Wake will also be released on a national level this year, the record label thus far undisclosed. This album is to be recorded on a fostex mr-8 and considered part three of the Silence/Throatsleep series.

• So if you're looking for lyrical content and a new artist to support, check out http://www.myspace.com/chrisbathgate or head to Ann Arbor's Wazoo Records or Encore REcords and rigle through the local section.

• Thank you Mr. Bathgate.

LATEST ALBUM:

Throatsleep

KEY TRACKS:

"Creak, Cure Dawn"

"All Of My Friends Have Been

Replaced With Cities"

"I Know How You're Going To Die Tonight"