AMERICA’S MOST POPULAR COMBO
In the fall of 1979, an instrumental rock ‘n’ roll combo called the Raybeats burst forth on the New York scene. The quartet was comprised of four transplanted Midwesterners: drummer Don Christensen (Nebraska), guitarist Jody Harris (Kansas), guitarist/saxophonist/organist Pat Irwin (Iowa), and bassist George Scott (also from Iowa). It was during the height of the New Wave era — Blondie was racking up one hit single after another, the Talking Heads were starting to make some noise, and the Ramones hit the silver screen with Rock ‘n’ Roll High School. In 1977, in an act of retaliation, the No Wave scene sprang up, spearheaded by the likes of Mars, DNA, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, and the Contortions. Two years later, in another act of retaliation, the Raybeats, out of their love for instrumental music and a desire to not work with another moody lead singer, decided to let their instruments do the talking.
TAKE A CHANCE
The seeds of the Raybeats were planted in the soil of the Contortions, a forerunner in New York’s No Wave scene. The band’s best-known line-up, pieced together in the winter of 1977-78, consisted of James Chance (formerly of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, featuring a young Lydia Lunch) on saxophone and vocals, Jody Harris on guitar, Pat Place on slide guitar, Adele Bertei on Acetone organ, George Scott on bass, and Don Christensen on drums.
The Contortions became popular pretty quickly, first appearing on the No New York compilation, released in November 1978. Shortly thereafter, the group’s alter-ego, James White and the Blacks, a No Wave disco band, made their entrance. As James White and the Blacks, they recorded one album, Off White, and as the Contortions, they recorded Buy; both albums were released in the fall of 1979 on ZE Records.
In the spring of 1979, while recording Buy, tensions flew, and George Scott left the band.
“One of my big regrets at the time was that I didn’t walk with him,” Christensen recalled more than a quarter century later. “But, in retrospect, I’m glad I stayed, otherwise those records might’ve never been made, and there’s some stuff there that I really like.”
The Contortions continued with David Hofstra (an old friend of Jody Harris’) on bass; George Scott, meanwhile, hooked up with John Cale, doing a series of gigs that would evolve into Cale’s live Sabotage album, issued in 1979.
COOL GROOVES
Constantly involved in projects, George Scott didn’t waste any time piecing together a new band. Scott had wanted to form a band with Lydia Lunch for some time, and with the Contortions behind him and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks behind her, they finally decided to form 8-Eyed Spy in the spring of 1979. Jim Sclavunos (also of Teenage Jesus) was brought in on drums, and Michael Paumgarden and Pat Irwin were both recruited by Scott to round out the line-up. Although centering around vocalist Lydia Lunch, the primal rhythms generated by 8-Eyed Spy would eventually evolve into the instrumental sound Scott and Irwin both longed to pursue.
“The Raybeats grew out of our love for instrumental music and the desire not to deal with singers,” Christensen stated. The slew of prima donna vocalists they had all worked with had motivated them all to pursue another, less vocal, musical endeavor. By the fall of 1979, James White had an all-new Contortions line-up, and Scott seized the opportunity to reconnect with his former band mates.
“George was working in a record store when he got the idea to put the band together,” Pat Irwin recalled.
At that point in time, twelve-inch dance singles were all the rage, and many of them had instrumental remixes of the A-side (or plug side) on the B-side of the disc. One of the songs that particularly fascinated Scott was Michael Viner’s Incredible Bongo Band’s cover of “Apache,” originally a hit for the Shadows. The song became popular in the late 1970s when used as samplings by the likes of Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash.
“Rap and hip-hop was in its infancy,” Irwin continued. “DJ’s were scratching and cutting up the twelve-inch singles and people were starting to rap over them. I think this really inspired George and he thought that it would be a great time to start an instrumental rock and roll band. It didn’t have anything to do with hip-hop but it had everything to do with the instrumental side of it. George called me up as excited as I’ve ever heard him be: ‘Let’s form an instrumental band!’”
Before calling Irwin, Scott initially got together with Don Christensen and they spent a few days “getting some cool grooves going.” Then they brought Jody Harris into the fold. After one rehearsal with Jody, they contacted Pat and asked him to join. “It all happened in a short period of time,” Christensen said, “maybe a couple of weeks.”
All four members were instrumental fans: the Ventures, the Meters, the Shadows, Booker T. & the M. G.’s, et al. But, according to Irwin, “George knew more about instrumentals than any of us. He had the most amazing collection of 45’s that I’d ever seen. I think he had every Link Wray 45 ever made. He turned me on to a lot of great music. One minute it would be ‘The Lonely Surfer’ [by Jack Nitzsche] and the next it would be a Bootsy Collins’ record.”
The four musicians hit it off well professionally and personally, and when they “weren’t playing music, we were hanging out,” Irwin said. “It was a great feeling and felt like a band.”
WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Things fell into place pretty quickly: “Big Black Sneakers,” “Tight Turn,” “Tone Zone, “Searching” and “Piranha Salad” were songs they wrote early on, balancing their repertoire with carefully selected cover tunes. As their songbook kept growing, they realized they would have to have a name if they wanted to play live.
Although it’s natural to assume their name was a play on the word “rabies,” that wasn’t the case. They were paying homage to Link Wray and His Raymen, as well as the fact that (according to Irwin) “George’s girlfriend at the time had a collection of ‘Rayguns,’ so that had something to do with it. . . . and there were obviously a couple of great bands with ‘beats’ in the name.”
“I can’t remember who actually said it, but when I heard ‘Raybeats,’ I couldn’t stop laughing,” Christensen recollected. “It just sounded so corny.”
But corny, in a way, was what they were after.
“We wanted to distance ourselves from a lot of what was going on,” Christensen said. “It wasn’t cool to play instrumentals or to wear suits.”
A GREAT DANCE BAND
Their freshman gig was a benefit at the Squat Theatre Nightclub, located near the Chelsea Hotel, in late September 1979. This was followed by an inauspicious outing at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, New Jersey, then a more fitting affair (and reception) at Tier 3 in lower Manhattan.
“Everybody was at the Tier 3 show,” Irwin said. “It was the place to be. A lot of people knew who we were because of the Contortions and 8-Eyed Spy. We were probably pretty loose. But for a lot of people hanging out on the club scene, the band was really something else, particularly for the No Wave scene.”
They immediately built up a reputation as a hardworking combo that loved to play.
“We were definitely a party band,” Christensen stated. “The shows always went well. I think it was an advantage that we didn’t have a moody lead singer for the fans to focus on — it gave them a chance to just have fun and boogie down.”
“The dancing was pretty wild,” Irwin added. “Don always put down a pretty tough beat and people would shake it right back. The Raybeats’ fans were the best and the dancing was great. It was all very unpretentious.”
NOT A SURF BAND
Although the original line-up never released any official recordings (they did, however, record a four-song demo, current whereabouts unknown), their concerts were met with such enthusiasm that they generated a lot of press in the various NYC music publications. Since they played only instrumentals, the Raybeats soon found themselves being labeled as a “surf” band, a moniker they took as a personal affront.
“The Ventures had been a big influence on the instrumental scene, and since they were often referred to as a surf band, I think it was just an easy way for the journalists to pigeonhole an instrumental band,” Irwin said. “But, it would make us all bristle when they would call us a surf band – it seemed to diminish what we were doing instead of describe it.”
Harris and Christensen also disfavored the comparison. In a 2001 interview with Mohair Sweets, Jody Harris commented on the music he made with the Raybeats: “There was a strong pull at the time for us [. . .] to just be a surf band, but we didn’t wanna do that. We were artsters!”
And Christensen, although a big fan of the surf music era, didn’t view the Raybeats as a continuation of it; instead, he saw them as musical trailblazers trying to take instrumental music somewhere it hadn’t been yet.
“I was always interested in that next step,” Christensen said. “We liked ‘Wipeout’ and ‘Pipeline’ and traditional instrumentals like that, but we were trying to do something different. We were trying to take instrumental music to that next level.”
THERE IS NO SURF IN MINNEAPOLIS . . . JUST SURF MUSIC
In April 1980, the Raybeats travelled to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where they played two gigs at 7th Street Entry and met a kindred spirit named Danny Amis, who would later play an important role in the Raybeats’ history.
“In 1979 and 1980, I had a band called the Overtones and we played mostly instrumentals,” Amis recalled. “I booked a tour for us to the east coast that fell through, [but while lining up the gigs] I heard about the Raybeats from club owners in New York City, so I bugged my friend, who booked 7th Street Entry, to bring the Raybeats to town.”
Amis’ friend finally did, and he put the Overtones in the opening slot for the two nights that the Raybeats played.
“I was blown away,” Amis recollected. “It was exciting to hear another band doing original instrumentals, but to also hear such rich arrangements was amazing to me.”
“The bands were kind of opposites,” Irwin said. “The Overtones were kind of straightforward, crisp and ‘pop.’ The Raybeats were kind of free form and all over the place.”
As the adage goes, opposites attract, and the groups hit it off well. Scott and Amis, in particular, “hit it off really well – he was such a great guy and we had so much in common musically,” Amis said.
“I don’t think there was a single instrumental record that they didn’t know about,” Irwin said. “I think they stayed up all night listening to and gabbing about records. It was cool that there was another instrumental band out there.”
Their new friendship didn’t end with the Raybeats’ return to New York. Scott and Amis maintained a correspondence and Scott would stay at Amis’ apartment whenever he was in the Twin Cities area, “which happened a lot since he had so many projects going,” Amis recalled.
THE DEATH OF GEORGE
On August 5th, 1980, the Raybeats were scheduled to meet for a band photo shoot. Christensen, Harris and Irwin all showed, but when Scott failed to make an appearance, concern set in.
“We were only about a block away from his apartment,” Christensen remembered, “so we went down there to see what was up. As we got there, we could see the police going into the building.”
A friend of Scott’s from out of town had been staying at the bass player’s apartment and found the body just a short time before Christensen, Harris and Irwin arrived. The cause of death was a heroin overdose, a drug Scott was introduced to about three years earlier when he played in Jack Ruby.
It was a severe personal and professional blow, one the Raybeats never fully recovered from.
“There’s no doubt that George’s death left a void in the band,” Irwin recalled. “Actually, that’s an understatement. George’s death left a void in the entire New York scene. It wasn’t the same without him.”
ENTER THE CALHOUN SURFER
The surviving Raybeats didn’t spend much time debating whether or not to continue — they figured Scott would want them to keep the band alive, so they decided initially to soldier on as a trio and hire a bass player. However, when Peter Holsapple (of the dB’s) got word to Danny Amis about Scott’s death, thoughts of trading six strings for four started searing through the young Midwesterner’s mind.
“At the time,” Amis remembered, “the Overtones were about to break up and everyone I knew told me I should try to join the Raybeats, something I had thought about anyway. So, I called Don Christensen and offered to join. He talked it over with Pat and Jody, then called me back a few days later and said to come on out.”
“It seemed right,” Irwin said. “When Don, Jody and I decided to continue the Raybeats after George died, it meant something to all of us that Danny and George had known each other. I remember that Danny showed up with a Fender bass with a racing stripe on it and he was ready to go.”
Still reeling from the passing of their friend and founding member, Christensen, Harris and Irwin, with Amis in tow, were able to set some of their grief aside and throw themselves back into the music they had forged together.
“In a way,” Irwin added, “Danny saved the band.”
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
After a few rehearsals with the new bassist, they played a late-night/early-morning gig at Danceteria. Despite some negative “pre-press” from the Village Voice, Amis remembered receiving “a very warm reception — I think the audience was ready to hear the Raybeats again.”
Amis’ debut also proved to be the debut of the matching suits, a wardrobe venture that went over well, becoming a band trademark.
“We had discussed wearing suits when George was still alive,” Christensen recalled, “but we didn’t get it together until Danny joined.” Christensen particularly enjoyed the retroactive move, a throwback to a time when “all the bands I played in wore uniforms.”
Right after Amis’ debut, they were on the road again.
“We were poised, ready to go,” Christensen said. “We probably played and toured more than any other band in New York City at that time.”
The band toured incessantly, managing to develop a solid fan base throughout the country, if not the world. As a twenty-one-year-old realizing his dream of being a full-time professional musician, Amis really took to life on the road.
“The highlight for me was travelling to so many places I’d never been,” he said, “and meeting people from all over the world. There were so many cities I was discovering for the first time.”
“We played any place that would have us,” Irwin said. “We were one of the first ‘out-of-town’ bands to play the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia.”
To usher in 1981, they played some gigs at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go in Los Angeles, opening for the Go-Go’s.
“They didn’t have a record deal yet, but they were really popular and for good reason,” Irwin recalled. “The Go-Go’s would come out and announce us before we went on, which was good because the locals weren’t there to see the Raybeats – it was definitely a Go-Go’s crowd. We kind of had to fight for our lives – literally. It was New Year’s Eve on the Sunset Strip and it seemed like the center of the universe. Kathy [Valentine] was just joining the band and it seemed like everyone was there. We had met John Belushi in NYC and he was a fan and was there. John [Doe] and Exene [Cervenka] from X were there. There were lots of musicians and lots of Go-Go’s fans. The crowd was spilling out into the street.”
They also played a series of gigs in San Francisco’s Bay Area while, according to Irwin, holing up “in a dive of a hotel in Chinatown – how we survived that one, I don’t know”; did a handful of gigs with the Romantics in the southwest (Irwin: “Something jogs my memory about us drinking everything in sight from their dressing room and inviting all of their friends and fans in to our room for a party”); played with the Jam at the Palladium in New York City; and waited in the wings while the Bangles opened for them at the Peppermint Lounge.
“One of my favorite memories was playing a show with the B-52’s at West Point,” Irwin recalled. “At that point the B’s had released Whammy! and were touring to support it. They were a pretty major group at that point. We played first and I remember that the audience was a sea of cadets dressed in identical uniforms. It was surreal.”
ROPING WILD BEARS
While playing at Club Foot in Austin, Texas, Don Christensen ran into Dan Dryden, a childhood friend he had attended grade school with in Nebraska. They hadn’t laid eyes on each other in years. Christensen was now a professional musician and Dryden was a recording engineer. Dryden asked them if they’d like to make a record in his little studio.
“So, we went back to Austin around Christmas of 1980,” Christensen said. “We did pretty much what we wanted to do. As far as Raybeats’ recording experiences went, it was one of the better ones.”
Despite Christensen’s fond recollection of the experience, Amis recalled “that the studio . . . was located next to the airport. That meant we could only record at night when there was no air traffic. We were pretty tired during those sessions, and I think that slowed down the tempo a bit.”
The EP consisted of four songs — three originals (”Searching,” “Tone Zone” and “Tight Turn”) composed by the original foursome and a cover of the Shadows’ classic “The Rise and Fall of Flingel Bunt.” Unable to secure a deal in the U. S., the record, dedicated to George Scott’s memory, was issued on the British label Don’t Fall Off the Mountain (a subsidiary of Beggar’s Banquet) in early 1981.
“We were featured on the cover of NME [New Musical Express],” Christensen said, “but we couldn’t get a deal with a major label.”
“It wasn’t easy finding anybody to put out that music,” Irwin said. “No singer? No focal point? We were so far off of what was being played at the time it wasn’t even funny.”
A few years before the Raybeats came on the scene, the Edgar Winter Group had a big hit with “Frankenstein” (in 1973), and shortly after they came on the scene, Herbie Hancock scored with “Rocket” (in 1982). So, the possibility for instrumental music being popular again was there, but no label with clout was jumping on the bandwagon.
“There was a time [in the early 1960s] when instrumental music was really popular,” Christensen added. “The first music I ever played was surf music, and I think there’s still a lot of potential for that kind of music, but that [the early 1980s] was an odd time in the record industry.”
And what about that nifty EP title?
“I think the title was Jody’s idea,” Irwin stated. “It’s a favorite of mine.”
Harris, a movie buff, copped the title from a 1934 documentary directed by W. Earle Frank. The film (about ten minutes in length) was about bears bothering livestock in the Tonto Basin of Arizona; they were roped and shipped off to local zoos.
GUITAR BEAT
The group’s debut album, Guitar Beat, was recorded in England in April 1981 with Martin Rushent producing. Rushent had garnered acclaim as the producer of the Buzzcocks and the Stranglers. Beggar’s Banquet, the parent company of Don’t Fall Off the Mountain, was in negotiations with Rushent regarding salary, and while those went on, the Raybeats were forced to “sit in London for a month with nothin’ to do and no money,” Christensen recalled. When an amount was finally reached between the label and the producer, the Raybeats journeyed to Rushent’s brand new studio, located at the 15th Century village of Goring-on-Thames.
“It was a beautiful studio,” Christensen recalled, “and we were the first to try it out.”
The band members were enthusiastic about working with Rushent, who stepped into the project with an already impressive resume under his belt; however, Rushent seemed more preoccupied with working out the bugs in his new studio than in working with the Raybeats.
“He was still shakin’ it all out,” Don said. “He was still figuring out the new studio while recording us.”
Despite being irked by Rushent’s preoccupation with his new studio, the band members found him to be quite appealing on a personal level.
“Martin Rushent was a very personable fellow,” Christensen said. “He was fun to hang out with, and he was definitely a master of the studio. But, we didn’t see eye-to-eye on how to make the record. I don’t think he’d had much experience with guitar-oriented bands like the Raybeats. The record company wanted us to have a ‘big name’ producer, but I don’t think he was the right choice for us.”
Although he may not have been the ideal choice for producing an instrumental combo, Amis thought Rushent “did a good job of keeping our enthusiasm up. Since Martin had had so much commercial success, and with the music industry so unpredictable, we had pretty high hopes [for the album].”
The band’s hopes would soon fade. Although the British and American versions of the album (it was released in the states by PVC/Jem) debuted to critical raves, sales were dismal.
“The sad thing was that we had a difficult time getting the industry to take instrumentals seriously,” Amis recalled. “That was surprising, given that we had no trouble winning over fans and critics.”
DANNY’S DEPARTURE
For a while, tension had been brewing between Amis and the other Raybeats. Since the recording of Guitar Beat, they hadn’t had much luck with recording sessions, and the touring grind allowed them to barely make a living, pulling in just enough money for gas, food and lodging. On top of that, Amis’ ego was creating problems that were quickly coming to a head. Harris, Christensen and Irwin had repeatedly complained to Amis about “my bass playing and my bad tone, and my reluctance to change those things after being asked repeatedly to do so. But we all knew it went deeper than that.”
“If they’d had group therapy for bands, we could’ve used it,” Christensen cracked. “There was a lot of unspoken resentment.”
Jody Harris was the one elected to break the news to Amis with an early morning telephone call in the spring of 1982.
“Obviously, I wasn’t happy about it at the time,” Amis said, “but they certainly did the right thing. There were a lot of personality differences, mainly stemming from the fact that I was just a twenty-year-old kid. You could say I wasn’t really handling the responsibility and sudden notoriety very gracefully. . . . It took me a long time to realize my mistakes, but I completely acknowledge them now. Despite the way it looks to most people, being in a band is NOT easy – it’s like being in a really insecure family that constantly travels.”
Originally a guitarist, Amis was restricted with his role as a bassist, and he was anxious to get back to playing guitar on a full-time basis. Despite that, Amis doesn’t cite the standard “musical differences” ploy as a line of defense.
“Musically, I suppose I’m a little more traditional than the others,” Amis said in reference to his preference of straightforward surf-pop stylings, “[but] I enjoyed the new [free-form] approach [of the Raybeats’ music], so I didn’t find it frustrating at all. I definitely learned a lot.”
Even though Amis’ tenure in the band wasn’t frustrating from a musical standpoint, it did prove to be musically limiting.
“It was kind of a thankless job [for him],” Irwin said. “Here he was, the leader of his own band in Minneapolis, and then to go to New York to take somebody else’s place in an already established band . . . wasn’t exactly showing him at his best. Nevertheless, he kind of put his own spin on it. . . . I think Danny did a great job while he was with the band.”
With Amis gone, the Raybeats reverted to the plan they originally had when George Scott died – they continued as a trio, hiring on a succession of bass players. Most notably, they worked with David Hofstra (a long-time friend of Jody’s who had replaced Scott in the Contortions) and Bobby Albertson (who replaced Laura Kennedy in the Bush Tetras). They also worked with Gene Holder (of the dB’s, who were longtime friends of the Raybeats, having dedicated their debut album, Stands for Decibels, to the memory of George Scott).
IT’S ONLY A MOVIE!!!
The group’s agent/manager at the time, Bob Singerman, was able to secure a record deal for the band with Shanachie, a label known mainly for doing folk music. The group recruited Joe Blaney, who had already made a name for himself as an engineer for the Clash, later branching into producing for the Bush Tetras, among others, to assist with the production chores. The album was recorded at Surf Sounds, a 16-track studio constructed in Christensen’s loft, during the summer of 1983.
“[Most of the] material on the record was totally influenced by the introduction of the drum machine,” Irwin recalled. “The drum machine was everywhere, and like most of us at that time, we kind of fell under its spell. . . . My memory of the drum machine is not a happy one. It was a sound that seemed to be everywhere and we just kind of went with it.”
One thing that all three band members enjoyed doing was recording a handful of songs live-to-two track. All the album’s cover tunes – Link Wray’s “Jack the Ripper,” Henry Mancini’s “Banzai Pipeline,” Booker T.’s “Jelly Bread,” and a medley of Jimmy Waller’s “Soul Beat” and Robert Hafner’s “Intoxica” – were culled from the live set the group was doing at the time.
“I love the live stuff,” Irwin said. “It sounds like the band.”
Christensen also enjoyed the live-to-two-track tunes, claiming them to be “the best stuff on the album.”
And Jody Harris [in a 1985 interview] commented, “It might make sense to do everything that way, but it would be like admitting that we’re never going to sell records. There’s just no way [that] records like that would ever get on the radio.”
The record also spawned something the group had never done before – a video. It was for their cover of “Jack the Ripper.” The video was done by Margaret Crimmins and Pierce Rafferty, who did the sound and direction, respectively, for the 1982 documentary The Atomic Café. They were friends of the Raybeats from “the neighborhood” in Lower Manhattan. Constructed on a nothing budget, they put together the video using stock footage, mostly war-related propaganda films, featuring such things as horses wearing gas masks. Both Irwin and Christensen liked the surrealistic (and sardonic) atmosphere of the video, and it managed to generate enough of a buzz to garner national airplay, most notably on the USA Network’s music show Night Flight and, according to Christensen, some late-night MTV time.
Although the title on the album jacket was It’s Only A Movie!, the title on the album’s label was Let’s Go to the Movies. Like Roping Wild Bears, Let’s Go to the Movies was a short documentary film, this one made in 1949 and featuring John Barrymore and Mary Pickford.
THE FINAL CHORD
In support of the album, the group did a big tour during the spring of 1984, covering much of the continental United States, with Bobby Albertson handling bass duties. Christensen, in particular, liked the sound the band had with Albertson and he was looking forward to developing it further, but another pitfall was around the corner, and it proved to be the band’s undoing.
“We submitted some new songs to Shanachie for a possible follow-up album to It’s Only A Movie!, and they didn’t like the material,” Christensen said in reference to some songs they had recorded with Philip Glass, who had agreed to produce the album. “That hurt. We talked things over and decided we could either continue to beat the band into the ground and end up hating each others’ guts, or we could pack it in, move onto other projects and still be friends – and that’s pretty much what we did.”
In November 1985, an interview with Jody Harris and Pat Irwin appeared in Guitar Player magazine; ironically, by that time, the Raybeats were already a part of the past: Jody Harris was already working with the Golden Palominos, a band led by Anton Fier that was starting to make some serious noise; Don Christensen and pal Philip Glass founded a recording studio called The Living Room; and Pat Irwin produced Romeo Void lead singer Debora Iyall’s solo debut (Strange Language) and Love Tractor’s This Ain’t No Outerspace Ship.
Christensen, Harris and Irwin regrouped for one more gig with Jared Michael Nickerson (formerly of Human Switchboard and currently with Burnt Sugar) on bass, an anniversary show for the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1990. Iggy Pop, Philip Glass and other musical luminaries were in attendance. After the concert, someone suggested that they give it another full-time go as the Raybeats. They decided unanimously (and immediately) that that would be a bad idea; by that time, they all had established other interests for themselves, and the legacy of the Raybeats, they felt, was best left to the past.
In the mid-1990s, Danny Amis’ band, Los Straitjackets, made a big splash, revitalizing interest in instrumental music and the surf era. But, somewhere between the ‘50s raunchiness of Link Wray and the ‘60s crispness of the Ventures, and the second coming of surf in the final decade of the 20th century, the Raybeats filled the void in their quest to take instrumental music to “that next level.”
