Arto Lindsay at The Atlantic BKLN

After his tenure as guitarist in the great no wave band DNA and punk-jazzers the Lounge Lizards, Arto Lindsay formed the equally exciting (and ambitious) Ambitious Lovers, while also being involved with the earliest incarnations of the Golden Palominos. Born in Richmond, Virginia in 1953, Lindsay grew up partially in Brazil, where his parents were missionaries. Early in his musical career, he began conflating the Brazilian pop music of his youth with the sonic density and avant-garde urgings he pursued as a member of the Lower East Side noise rock scene. As a result, his recordings as leader of Ambitious Lovers are not all atonal skronk, but rather a deft blend of dance-pop and sonic adventurousness...

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After his tenure as guitarist in the great no wave band DNA and punk-jazzers the Lounge Lizards, Arto Lindsay formed the equally exciting (and ambitious) Ambitious Lovers, while also being involved with the earliest incarnations of the Golden Palominos. Born in Richmond, Virginia in 1953, Lindsay grew up partially in Brazil, where his parents were missionaries. Early in his musical career, he began conflating the Brazilian pop music of his youth with the sonic density and avant-garde urgings he pursued as a member of the Lower East Side noise rock scene. As a result, his recordings as leader of Ambitious Lovers are not all atonal skronk, but rather a deft blend of dance-pop and sonic adventurousness. With inestimable help from keyboardist and Ambitious Lover co-conspirator Peter Scherer, the first Ambitious Lovers release, Envy, retained more of a dissonant edge, and as such didn't seem too far removed from Lindsay's days with DNA. The next record, Greed, was a slick, ebullient pop record that sounded like a direct descendent of the Brazilian pop recorded by giants such as Jorge Ben, Caetano Veloso, and Gilberto Gil. With plenty of uptempo, danceable tracks, the noisy undercurrent was downplayed perhaps a bit more than noisemeisters would like, but the resulting album was nearly flawless. As was its follow-up, Lust, which, true to its title, was a touch more salacious, and undeniably great modern pop music. Although they didn't sell records in the millions (or the hundreds of thousands for that matter), Ambitious Lovers were one of the few bands to live up to their name record after record.

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