Collection: Silentist

"Silentist is one man, Mark Evan Burden, playing all instruments in his own band-- drums, guitar, piano, whatever else-- pre-recording the ones that would be physically unfeasible to play live (like the piano), and switching on the strobe as he guitar-wails or drums for a vampiric rave effect. This track, "Vital Recital", shows his best trick: how he broadens shredder-metal and classic rock riffs with ragtime and dirge-and-bounce piano, "stroke me stroke me" over a Shostakovich-homage outro cause metal dudes are all secretly classical dudes (though most will be forthcoming about this fact, I believe). The interviews I've had with Mark Evan Burden about music included such topics as: Henry Cowell (your favorite piano composer and mine) and Antioch Arrow. (Mark later played in my favorite incarnation of Get Hustle with ex-Antiochs Mac Mann and Ron A and, of course, their gypsy-rose, glamorous hellraiser vocalist, Valentine.)" - Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, Pitchfork