Rothko

Initially formed as a bass-guitar-only instrumental trio, Rothko later served primarily as a platform for founding member Mark Beazley’s solo projects and outside partnerships. The London outfit produced music that was typically meditative, minimal, languid, and sonically diffuse, evoking the abstract expressionist painter after whom the group was named. Beazley’s four-track home recordings provided the seed; in spring 1997 the project expanded when he recruited Crawford Blair, whom he located through a magazine advertisement, and Jon Meade, a former bandmate from Geiger Counter who had never played bass before. Following a string of singles and EPs, the trio issued its first album, the blissfully ambient A Negative For Francis, on Lo Recordings in 1999. Although the ensemble remained devoted almost exclusively to bass guitars—often processed electronically to generate varied timbres—it gradually incorporated understated additional colors such as horns, woodwinds, keyboards, and, on the hyperbolically titled second album Forty Years to Find a Voice, vocals. In a highly productive two-year span the group placed two further albums with Lo, among them the live collection Not Gone. Not Forgotten., and several more on smaller imprints, including the mini-album In The Pulse of an Artery. The original lineup disbanded amicably in 2001 after touring with Porcupine Tree. Beazley retained the Rothko moniker for subsequent collaborations, beginning with Japanese producer Susumu Yokota on the 12-inch EP Waters Edge and the later full-length Distant Sounds of Summer; with D.C. sound artist Jim Adams, known as Blk w/ Bear, on 2003’s Wish For a World Without Hurt; and with British poet and vocalist Caroline Ross on 2005’s A Place Between. Ross’s band Delicate AWOL became unofficial but recurring participants in the expanded Rothko circle, contributing to the post-disbandment albums A Continual Search for Origins (2002) and Eleven Stages of Intervention (2007), both of which broadened the instrumental palette while preserving a core emphasis on bass. Under his own name, and again with assistance from AWOL members, Beazley scored the Discovery Channel docudrama The Flight That Fought Back, which examined United Airlines Flight 93; excerpts from that score later surfaced on the three-song Rothko single A Personal Account of Conflict.