Of Two Worlds & Many Universes: Cynic

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IT'S TOUGH TO make a living if your band exists in a marginalized music genre. It's even harder for Cynic, which exists in two.

The Miami-born, Los Angeles-based group plays a form of experimental metal that leans heavily on jazz — not for improvisation but for complicated harmonies. After Cynic's landmark 1993 album, "Focus" (Roadrunner), the critically praised group found it so rough going that it disbanded a year later.

"Part of the reason for our breakup post-'Focus' was that we were with the wrong record company. Roadrunner was so metal," said guitarist-singer Paul Masvidal, who makes up Cynic's core with drummer Sean Reinert. "[W]e discovered Roadrunner wouldn't release Sean and I from the contract. ... What ended up happening was a big legal mess, a series of things that beat us up emotionally and psychologically. ... It led to our demise, essentially."

After relocating to Los Angeles to work on TV and film soundtracks, Masvidal and Reinert formed the less rock, more ambient group Æon Spoke. But it wasn't until 2007 that the duo called upon the Cynic name and style again for a tour. That experience led to 2008's "Traced in Air" (Season of Mist), another collection of technically remarkable songs that might be too progressive for metalheads and too metal for jazzheads, but it has critics drooling with praise.

The remarkable "Traced in Air" is complex, layered and swimming in progressive melodies and harmonies, as well as futuristic lyrical imagery, which Masvidal delivers in an ethereal voice.

"[T]o some degree there is that 'Blade Runner' thing going on with Cynic," laughed Masvidal. "I don't know why. It has this post-apocalyptic, futuristic cyber thing — it feels really clean and processed. ... To me, it's almost like cosmic music without going hippy. Just cosmic in terms of being extremely dynamic and expansive and working more on a molecular level than just on mundane Earth matters. It's in a different realm."

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BONUS Q&A

» EXPRESS: Where did your interest in chromaticism come from?
» MASVIDAL: I don't know. I think it's just listening to different kinds of music. It's just the nature of the ears absorbing a lot of jazz, and I got into a lot of chromaticism. A lot of people don't realize that Bach, if you swing the "Inventions" and a lot of of Bach stuff, it practically becomes bebop. It's super-chromatic, too. So, there's all that going on with my formative years and studies, and it turned into this weird hybrid when I started to write songs; hearing a lot of chromatic movement and different colors and chordal combinations, and it just made its way into this thing that turned into Cynic. It was just a natural thing as the result of playing and listening to a lot of different things.

» EXPRESS: With your interest in jazz, why doesn't Cynic doesn't improvise more?
» MASVIDAL: [The songs are] written through improvisations that become concrete. A lot of the ideas are fluid, and then we just compose them and say it's now a finished idea. But Cynic always has felt more compositional to me than a totally improv band. There's moments where it feels appropriate to do that; for example, a lot of guitar solos are extensions of harmonies and not a solo-solo. It's really about keeping this continuity and really establishing a piece rather than reinventing it every time. Perhaps more in the future when we get into more headline dates on a regular basis, we'll probably be experimenting more just because we'll be so bored playing the same songs over and over.

» EXPRESS: You've studied with jazz guitarists Scott Henderson and Joe Diorio, but do you still follow jazz and do you have any favorite guitarists?
» MASVIDAL: One of my most favorite guitar players — he's harmonically heavy — is Ben Monder. He's so inspiring; I'm really blown away by what he's doing. I feel like he's taken the [Pat] Metheny language and gone into a whole other dimension with it. It's really complex and challenging, but once you wrap your ears around it it makes a lot of sense. He's a real player.

» EXPRESS: Do you ever get jazz folks at your shows, or is it mostly metal people?
» MASVIDAL: [When touring as an opening act] I'm usually seeing at least one [Frank] Zappa or Miles Davis or some kind of cool T-shirt at the shows. It just seems like they're like us, [people] who are into metal but also into all kinds of other stuff and appreciate what we do. But in terms of a purely Cynic audience, it's really eclectic; it's kind of all over the map. Because we get younger pop-emo kids and we get these more sophisticated musicians and jazz guys and that whole scene, and then there's the straight-ahead, old-school metal guys.

» EXPRESS: What's it like for Cynic to play these purely metal festivals in Europe?
» MASVIDAL: We played Wacken last year and we did this interview and the guy said, "Your music isn't very festival-oriented music. How does it feel to play for these crowds?" My answer was, "In response to that, we played the least festival-oriented song ever: "Textures" [laughs]. I dunno, I think [our music] really is anthemic and has a propelling, large quality — especially the new record, which goes over well in that context. We'll see; we're doing a bunch of large shows and festivals this summer, and it will be interesting to see how it goes because I think it's getting more refined in terms of our interpretation of this record. We're getting better at it.

» EXPRESS: I think you'd fit in really well with a lot of those forward-looking jazz festivals, especially ones in Norway like Kongsberg or Molde.
» MASVIDAL: That would be cool, and that's what we're looking forward to: being the heavy band on a more experimental bill, versus just being lumped in with a lot of extreme bands and being the light, weird band. ... I think that's a whole other field that we haven't explored yet that will eventually open up to us — that kind of more open-minded alternate world.

» EXPRESS: What's the status of the other band you and Sean do, Æon Spoke?
» MASVIDAL: After this tour, we're going to go back into the studio. We have a new record written and we're just going to go experiment and see what it sounds like. We know we're taking it into a different direction; we're just not sure what that is yet. But the songs are there, so I feel fine about having a really solid foundation. ... We're excited because it's going to be a really intense four weeks of Æon stuff.

» EXPRESS: What are the main differences for you when writing for Æon Spoke versus Cynic?
» MASVIDAL: I think it's just a different head. I don't know how to explain it. There's also some big shifts happening with Æon with the potential of introducing a female vocal, so it may go into an even further experimental direction. Really mellower and ambient, and a different kind of sophisticated space versus anything heavy or anything rock — leaving rock almost completely. That' where our heads are at now. And I think just harmonically and melodically, there's just things that are different: Cynic feels almost futuristic and modern; Æon is more Earthy or organic and pure — there's almost an innocence to it. I don't know how to explain it — childlike almost.

» EXPRESS: Would you say Æon Spoke's music is more simple?
» MASVIDAL: I don't think I'm capable of writing really simple, simple music. Even if it appears simple, there's some deceptive quality that I'll screw it up with. Æon is almost deceptively complex — like, less is more. It's like seeing a beautiful design and thinking, "Wow, that is so simple and meaningless, like a Rothko painting," but not realizing the approach to get there. That's kind of the approach with Æon: making it appear super-simple, which is really hard to do.