Spotlight - Ian Cat

Ian Cat: Progressive Shoegaze, Delay Music, and a Lifelong Love Affair with Rock & Roll

Ian Cat is a Boston-based musician whose sound sits at the intersection of shoegaze atmospherics, outer-space guitar tones, and the kind of restless creative energy that refuses to stay in one genre for long. Across a handful of releases, he's moved from progressive shoegaze to ambient guitar explorations, driven by a lifetime of deep listening and an insatiable appetite for music of all kinds. We caught up with Ian to talk origins, process, and his latest record, Paint the Stars Tonight.

From Providence Oldies Radio to My Bloody Valentine

Ian's musical education started early and came from every direction at once. "I've been surrounded by music my whole life, thanks mainly to my mother's interest," he says. Growing up in New England, his mother introduced him to the popular music canon through the oldies station out of Providence, B101 — "the 50s, 60s, and 70s" — bringing The Beatles and The Rolling Stones into the household alongside classical music, Frank Sinatra, and Glenn Miller big band records. She worked at Strawberry's headquarters before the company shut down, which meant a steady stream of promo CDs flowing into the house.

At the same time, the alt-rock boom was happening. Ian and his sister, just a couple of years older, were glued to Brown University's WBRU and catching MTV after school. Nirvana, R.E.M., Soundgarden, Smashing Pumpkins — these were formative. "The video for Green Day's 'Basket Case' blew me away," he recalls. "That song is still special to me." VH1's 100 Greatest compilation shows opened even more doors: The Velvet Underground, Public Enemy, Funkadelic, Television, 70s punk. Then Napster arrived.

"While I don't believe in pirating now, I was an avid downloader then, in my ignorance. But it gave me the opportunity to hear so much music and learn — and I would still make the effort to buy certain CDs with my allowance, for the music that really hit me."

It was during that era that he asked for a guitar for Christmas. "I knew I needed to be part of this thing. I needed to be a part of rock & roll."

The Making of a Guitarist — and an Accidental Solo Artist

Funny enough, guitar wasn't Ian's first instinct. As a kid, he wanted to play bass — specifically because of his love for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It was the Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and Jimi Hendrix records he found through Napster that pulled him decisively toward guitar. High school brought My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth, and experimental music. College brought English prog, courtesy of a friend who insisted he sit down with Genesis' Selling England by the Pound. "It's been a whirlwind of all kinds of music ever since."

For years, Ian's real ambition was to be someone else's lead guitarist — a Jimmy Page-style figure focused on composition rather than fronting a band. "I really wanted to be somebody's Jimmy Page," he says. "I wanted to be a lead player focusing on composition instead of writing lyrics and singing." But the projects he joined kept folding. After his band Beat Surrender dissolved in 2012 and he relocated to California, the conclusion became unavoidable: "I figured what the heck, I guess I'm a solo musician now."

A Catalog That Refuses to Stay Still

Ian releases music under the name Ian Cat, and his catalog already reflects a musician who is constitutionally incapable of repeating himself. He describes his style as "progressive shoegaze" — though he's quick to note that label really only fits part of his output. His releases include:

• East Coast New England Boy and Baggage Claim — the progressive shoegaze core of his catalog
• Incidentals EP — a mix of pieces composed for background music
• Paint the Stars Tonight — an ambient guitar album and his most recent release

"I would hope that my personality as a restless creative would come across in the work," he says. "Just can't get enough music to stay still in one genre or whatever."

Paint the Stars Tonight: Delay Music, Frippertronics, and a Pandemic Project

Ian's most recent album, Paint the Stars Tonight (2022), is the one he'd been quietly carrying around in his mind for years. The concept grew out of a personal practice he'd developed improvising with delay pedals — what he calls his "delay music." He'd hesitated to formalize it into a record, feeling he didn't yet have a proper system in place, something akin to Robert Fripp's Frippertronics approach.

The turning point came during a solo performance in California, when he dedicated part of his set to the delay music. "Several people approached me afterwards to specifically talk about that instead of some of the songs." He filed it away as a possibility. Then COVID hit, his performing group went on indefinite hold, and suddenly the conditions were right. "Trying to stay creative at home by myself, I figured it was time to explore delay music for an album."

The process was deeply technical and self-designed. Around Christmas 2021, Ian began devising his own system — physically drawing diagrams of how he wanted to organize input tracks and buses, mapping out what he describes as "a digital emulation of Frippertronics." From those diagrams he would tinker until satisfied with the sounds. The goal was to do something meaningfully different from Fripp's recordings: where Fripp leaned into distortion, Ian wanted clean guitar tones.

"It's a bit challenging to hide mistakes when working on this delay music, because a bum note is basically on the hook for a number of beats until it fades away finally. For Paint the Stars Tonight, I wanted to have minimal editing, if any at all, as a goal for the record."

He held to that goal. There are only a couple of very small edits on the entire album. Every track is its own contained, unbroken performance — a commitment to spontaneity and presence that gives the record its meditative quality.

What's Next

Ian's life has changed considerably since Paint the Stars Tonight. Marriage and fatherhood arrived in the post-COVID years, and live performances have been on the back burner while he gets settled. But the itch is returning. "I miss shredding for people," he says simply. He's looking forward to getting back to writing, and — most of all — to putting a band together and gigging again.

You can find everything Ian Cat at linktr.ee/iancat, stream and purchase his music on Bandcamp, and follow along on Instagram at @iancatmusic.