SALARYMAN w/ BASIC | PYGMALION 2026
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Salaryman formed in 01996 when Rick Valentin (RNV), Rose Marshack (RGM), Jim Valentin (JEV) and Howie Kantoff (HDK) of indie rock stalwarts Poster Children traded in their guitars for synthesizers and began crafting a unique blend of instrumental electronic rock that owes as much to Booker T. and the M.G.’s as it does to Kraftwerk.
Riding the 90s post-rock wave, Salaryman released two albums (Salaryman and Karoshi) on the acclaimed German label City Slang, and toured extensively throughout Europe with artists as diverse as Tortoise, Mouse on Mars, Superchunk, and Les Thugs, knocking out a coveted Peel Session along the way.
After releasing their third album The Electric Forest in 02006, the band went into extended cryosleep, only recently re-emerging to once again provide a soundtrack for our increasingly artificial reality.
Salaryman’s new record, A Hard Drive’s Gonna Fail, was conceived as all their music has been, through extended, recorded improvisations edited down into cohesive snapshots à la Can, albeit in a Normal, Illinois basement rather than a North Rhine-Westphalia castle.
The music fuses the obsolete with the emergent, embracing the friction between technological optimism and late-stage capitalist decline. Acknowledging society’s worship of innovation, efficiency and acquisition hurtling us toward collapse, the band’s message remains defiantly optimistic, a warning and a celebration: Yes, A Hard Drive’s Gonna Fail, yet somehow, everything’s going to be all right.
Working with guitars, drum machine, sampler, self-built electronics, and all manner of percussion, BASIC, the trio of Chris Forsyth, Mikel Patrick Avery, and Douglas McCombs, synthesize the vast influences and distinct histories of each member, producing a boundary-less, rhythm-forward amalgam of art rock, trance jazz, collective improvisation, and humming electronics on their new eponymous full-length, out June 12, 2026 on No Quarter.
BASIC’s “Basic” concept is groove-based, full of space and sonic fields both evocatively ancient and bracingly contemporary. It is a truly collective product with Forsyth, Avery, and McCombs balancing individual expression with surrender to the group. On “Basic” the result is entrancing and, if not “non-idiomatic” then something approaching pan-idiomatic. While still containing nods to Forsyth’s taut playing on BASIC’s debut, and the disciplined restraint of McCombs’s work with Tortoise, Avery’s presence ties everything into a subtly evolving rhythmic grid that has little precedent in rock music. He weaves programmed beats and understated drumming into an overarching processed swirl that’s truly at the heart of the group, allowing Forsyth and McCombs to explore rhythmic counterpoint and new stained-glass tonal landscapes.
Most exciting, perhaps, is the potential for a new renaissance of electro-acoustic groove music that fuses non-Western rhythmic boil with acid-psych moves and funky harmolodics that electrify both the body and the deepest neural pathways, and plays with the boundaries between art, technology and boogie.
Riding the 90s post-rock wave, Salaryman released two albums (Salaryman and Karoshi) on the acclaimed German label City Slang, and toured extensively throughout Europe with artists as diverse as Tortoise, Mouse on Mars, Superchunk, and Les Thugs, knocking out a coveted Peel Session along the way.
After releasing their third album The Electric Forest in 02006, the band went into extended cryosleep, only recently re-emerging to once again provide a soundtrack for our increasingly artificial reality.
Salaryman’s new record, A Hard Drive’s Gonna Fail, was conceived as all their music has been, through extended, recorded improvisations edited down into cohesive snapshots à la Can, albeit in a Normal, Illinois basement rather than a North Rhine-Westphalia castle.
The music fuses the obsolete with the emergent, embracing the friction between technological optimism and late-stage capitalist decline. Acknowledging society’s worship of innovation, efficiency and acquisition hurtling us toward collapse, the band’s message remains defiantly optimistic, a warning and a celebration: Yes, A Hard Drive’s Gonna Fail, yet somehow, everything’s going to be all right.
Working with guitars, drum machine, sampler, self-built electronics, and all manner of percussion, BASIC, the trio of Chris Forsyth, Mikel Patrick Avery, and Douglas McCombs, synthesize the vast influences and distinct histories of each member, producing a boundary-less, rhythm-forward amalgam of art rock, trance jazz, collective improvisation, and humming electronics on their new eponymous full-length, out June 12, 2026 on No Quarter.
BASIC’s “Basic” concept is groove-based, full of space and sonic fields both evocatively ancient and bracingly contemporary. It is a truly collective product with Forsyth, Avery, and McCombs balancing individual expression with surrender to the group. On “Basic” the result is entrancing and, if not “non-idiomatic” then something approaching pan-idiomatic. While still containing nods to Forsyth’s taut playing on BASIC’s debut, and the disciplined restraint of McCombs’s work with Tortoise, Avery’s presence ties everything into a subtly evolving rhythmic grid that has little precedent in rock music. He weaves programmed beats and understated drumming into an overarching processed swirl that’s truly at the heart of the group, allowing Forsyth and McCombs to explore rhythmic counterpoint and new stained-glass tonal landscapes.
Most exciting, perhaps, is the potential for a new renaissance of electro-acoustic groove music that fuses non-Western rhythmic boil with acid-psych moves and funky harmolodics that electrify both the body and the deepest neural pathways, and plays with the boundaries between art, technology and boogie.
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Where is it happening?
The Lake House In Crystal Lake Park, 206 West Park Street,Urbana, Illinois, United States
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.
Host or PublisherPygmalion
