Instrumental Fire

Whoever thought Lansdowne and the word "exotica" would show up in the same sentence? It took a visionary like Art Bourasseau to bring these two disparate elements together. Bourasseau is the president of MuSick recordings, a swanky new instrumental label based in Lansdowne, PA. Until now, the Philly suburb's only musical claim-to-fame is that Joan Jett lived there for a few uneventful years of her childhood.

Bourasseau, who moved to Lansdowne to be with his girlfriend, knows about "all that exotica stuff" from having grown up a surfer dude in the Caribbean.

His other credentials don't hurt, including his full-time job for the last five years as a marketing rep for Red record distribution (a division of Sony) and as a former sound assistant to his grandfather — a Chinese occult magician named Ching-Fu.

"Through him I discovered the awesome powers of wild instrumentals. There are no limits or language barriers with instro."

MuSick recently released their first album, Instrumental Fire — a space-giddy collection of 16 instrumentals that includes everything from the Nashville-based, Mexican-mask-wearing Los Straitjackets to our own Ben Vaughn (who's now all big in L.A. writing instrumentals for NBC's Third Rock from the Sun) to MuSick's first signing, the garage-styled Omega Men from Lebanon, PA.

Omega Men are made of former members of D.C.'s garage revivalists, the Cellar Dwellers, who call their latest Hammond organ-driven sound "Spy-Fi." They are one of three bands playing a night of Instro-mental Surf Madness at the Middle East this Thursday to celebrate the release of Instrumental Fire. Boston's The Fathoms will do their whirlybird surf sound and the D.C.-based Space Cossacks add a punk edge to the tasty waves.

"The Fathoms are one of the most respected authentic surf bands around," says Omega Man's lead guitarist, Custom XKE. "And Ivan [Pongracic] from the Space Cossacks is a real prodigy on the surf guitar."

Pongracic, originally from Croatia, also comes with curious surf cred — his father actually played in a Shadows tribute band in the '60s.

The Shadows'Shadows Are Go!,recently re-released by Scamp/Caroline records, is an album Bourasseau would have liked to release. Instead he plans to do a tribute album to the influential British instrumentalists (the bands who pay their respects include Los Straitjackets, Satan's Pilgrims, Jim Mankey of Concrete Blonde and The Space Cossacks — of course.)

MuSick has a full plate. They also plan to release the first Omega Men album early next year; a solo album from Eddie Angel of Los Straitjackets; and an album by The Cave 4, a garage band from Germany

"We're looking for the best bands — it doesn't matter whether local or not. It just so happened that the Omega Men are great and they're from Lebanon, PA."

And now it just so happens you can find surf, garage, lounge jazz and even outer space in the rockin' land of Lansdowne.

Instro-mental Surf Madness, Thu., Dec.12, The Middle East, 126 Chestnut St., 8-midnight. (610) 623-8467.

— Margit Detweiler