Three by Chas Smith

Composed in 2020–21, each work on Chas Smith’s album "Three" (Distance, The Replicant, and The End of Cognizance) is an ever-evolving single gesture, a seamless blend of tones and timbres from his metal sound sculptures (instruments with such names as Que Lastas, Bertoia, Lockheed, Towers, Sceptre, Parabaloid) and his homemade steel guitars (Guitarzilla, Jr. Blue, bass steel), all performed by the composer.

Composer–performer–instrument builder Chas Smith is a musician who has created his own unique musical world (in the spirit of Harry Partch)—complete with its own instruments—a world of expansive musical tapestries, carefully woven textures, that evolve via slow, constant processes of change. Smith has been heard playing his personally designed instruments on film scores by Thomas Newman, Charlie Clouser, Mark Mothersbaugh, Jeff Danna, Hans Zimmer, and others. His steel guitar playing has been featured on recordings by composers Harold Budd, Rick Cox, and others. He has performed his own works at new music festivals and art galleries in the US and Europe. His music has appeared on nine previous Cold Blue albums, and he may be heard on such labels as Varèse Saraband, Decca, Koch, Sony, Rastascan, All Saints, Cantil, and others.

“With Smith’s music, the sounds are as compelling as his concepts and instruments.” (The Wire)

“Smith’s pieces are music of experiment and discovery: a way of enabling the physical world to ‘speak’ by investigating, harnessing and organizing its sonic properties. The extraordinary sound-world of Smith’s articulately structured music captivates from the start.” (International Record Review)

“Chas Smith, musician, composer, engineer, metal craftsman and inventor, is a classic American original.” (New Times)

“Smith has a penchant for long tones and drones, as well as an ear and love for magnificent sonorities. . . . He elicits sounds that suggest thunder, approaching jetliners, electronics, screeching machinery, and . . . he integrates them into sumptuous compositions that range from delicate, lyrical vignettes to grating, sometimes horrific tone poems.” (San Francisco Bay Guardian)

"Chas Smith crafts . . . 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.” (Julien Cowley, The Wire)

“An unforgettable experience that engulfs the listener softly yet firmly. . . haunting like Ligeti's best works.” (All-Music Guide)

“Alchemical ambient, turning a ton of metal sculptures and homemade steel guitars into a single, drifting, golden feather.” (Igloo Magazine)

“[Smith’s] sounds seem to go on to the brink of forever . . . Wagnerian in intensity . . . consistently involving.” (Fanfare)

Chas Smith is a composer-performer-instrument builder who has created a unique musical world—complete with its own instruments. It’s a world of expansive ever-evolving musical tapestries and sculpted textures that display his fascination with both the scientific and the sensual. “With Smith’s music, the sounds are as compelling as his concepts and instruments.” (The Wire)