Putting your creative process into words is difficult, especially if you’re as forward-thinking as CYNIC. But after 30+ years, weathering hurricanes, teenage angst, homophobia and the tragic loss of their legendary rhythm section has given Paul Masvidal sage-like insight into the band’s celestial voyage.
Paul recently touched down at Audiotree Studios to talk about his journey. He and his interstellar bandmates also performed songs from CYNIC’s groundbreaking discography, including Adam’s Murmur off the newly re-issued “Traced In Air”.
“Traced In Air” changed the game for CYNIC, much like their landmark album “Focus” did years before. The band’s precedent-setting fusion of progressive music and mind-bending spiritual lyrics took the listener on an entirely new journey, solidifying their place as boundary-pushing pioneers.
“Traced in Air” is now being reissued on vinyl by Season of Mist. Available Formats:
12″ Vinyl Gatefold (Black)
12″ Coloured Vinyl Gatefold (Pink, Purple & White Marbled)
Audiotree is a Chicago-based music discovery platform producing high quality studio sessions and live performance recordings from artists all around the world.
CYNIC’s continual state of development has met its share of challenges over the years, hurdles that threatened to dismantle the entity’s forward surge. Yet through hurricanes, breakups, and assorted acrimony both personal and existential, it remains inspired to create.
Their name is synonymous with what it means to be truly progressive in music. CYNIC’s top-tier performance acumen and cerebral/spiritual/yogic themes finds them inhabiting a corner of the musical spectrum all their own. Their Venn diagram shows intersections with Death Metal, Prog Rock, Thrash Metal, Experimental, New Age, Jazz Fusion, and a myriad of other sonic expressions.
Debut album, “Focus” (1993), is a certified classic. Although that era ended with transformation into the short-lived “Portal”, and then a further splinter toward Aeon Spoke, CYNIC’s reunion-era has found them embraced in a way that proves how ahead of the times they were in the ‘90s. Through monuments such as the “Traced In Air” (2008) and “Kindly Bent To Free Us” (2014) albums, the “Carbon-Based Anatomy” and “Re-Traced” EPs, and a surprising rebirth with the “Humanoid” single of 2018, the CYNIC legacy remains untarnished. Yet early in the creation cycle for their fourth full-length album, they experienced horrible events that tested the entity’s resolve.
The year 2020 will go down in history as a tremendously difficult time for the global human population. For the CYNIC family, the struggle was not restricted to a pandemic. It was two utterly senseless losses that threw the band’s immediate concerns into the background: the premature deaths of drummer Sean Reinert in January, at age 48, and bassist Sean Malone in December, at age 50, were shocking and unthinkable.
Reinert and Malone heard elements of what ended up on Cynic’s fourth and latest album. Slowly, methodically, and with much careful deliberation, Masvidal completed an album titled “Ascension Codes”, to honor the memory of his fallen band mates. And while the album honors the lives and contributions of Reinert and Malone, it also pushes CYNIC forward for its own sake and through its own will to live. The album, paradoxically, acts as both swan song and rebirth. It is, throughout its 49 minutes, a vivid and highly cosmic journey into the very core of every impulse this band has ever explored.
CYNIC | Audiotree From Nothing:
- Adam’s Murmur
- Celestial Voyage
- In a Multiverse Where Atoms Sing
Watch CYNIC on Audiotree “From Nothing”:
CYNIC – Traced in Air Teaser (2008)
CYNIC- “King of Those Who Know” (Live in Mexico City 2010)
