Trans Am, the brainchild of Philip Manley’s (guitar and keyboards), based just outside Washington, are part of the wave of new keyboard-driven instrumental rock (Magnog, Jessamine, etc).

Their debut mini-album (Thrill Jockey, 1995) draws heavily on progressive rock and krautrock in pieces like Ballbados (guitar evolutions around a sardonic bass riff) and Orlando (spasmodic sounds at the border of hard rock and jazz-rock), although hints of techno-pop emerge in Firepoker (track six, not five as indicated on the cover). Experiments (Trans AM between minimalism, heavy metal, and Sonic Youth) culminate in the nine-minute Amerikan Kooter, with shrill organ lines and jagged convulsions from the rhythm section.

The band then makes a turn toward danceable grooves with the EP Illegal Ass (Happy Go Lucky, 1996), featuring the title track and Koln.

Surrender To The Night (Thrill Jockey, 1997) is a transitional work, mainly aimed at perfecting the band’s synchronizations. This time, the Teutonic side prevails—a dark, massive sound developed through rhythmic hyperbole. Even the sense of incompletion is Teutonic: Motr and Rough Justice, deafening guitar rock jams at the edge of heavy metal, truncate their own themes, content to create tension and suspense while delighting in confounding the listener with cacophonous eccentricities (as in the second track’s heavy distortion).
The cohesion among the musicians is miraculous. The instrumental parts interlock like the gears of a machine, even when they seem incoherent. Love Commander is spectacular in how it overlays a frenzied drum solo and liquid organ improvisations ā la Soft Machine over a fundamentally dub base. Illegalize It and Tough Love continue their learned study of danceable music, the first with sophisticated jazz-rock, the second with a polyrhythmic pastiche in the tradition of Neu and Kraftwerk. Cologne is a reworking of Koln. What this music lacks is purpose. There’s no finale, no message, no goal. Even Surrender To The Night, which takes off in a magma of electronic and percussive noise, never seems to end.

The Surveillance (Thrill Jockey, 1998), the second album by Philip Manley’s lineup, continues the purely instrumental, highly experimental approach of its predecessor without hesitation, adopting an austerity worthy of avant-garde chamber music. Essentially, Manley aims to act as a bridge between 1970s progressive rock and 1990s electronic dance music. In doing so, he reconnects the threads of countless half-formed ideas in rock history from bands pushing beyond the song format: Bitch Magnet, Can, Neu, King Crimson, Glenn Branca, and Steve Albini—or contemporaries like Run On and Ui.
Much of the album lives on turbulent exuberance, largely driven by the rhythmic hurricanes of Sebastian Thomson (drums) and Nathan Means (bass). The piercing wail of Armed Response gives way to a spasmodic progressive-rock riff that explodes into epileptic acceleration. In Campaign, insane guitar flurries and torrential drum syncopations develop into iterative patterns reminiscent of how Polyrock used minimalism in the early 1980s. The violent, emotional peak is Extreme Measures, a pachydermic blues-rock piece in the tradition of Blue Cheer and Hawkwind.
Half of the album belongs to avant-garde music history: Prowler 97 exists solely on a shrill rhythm-box beat and a drunken synthesizer; Access Control samples a phone signal and other noises in a rhythm-box style; and the comic interlude Home Security layers fluttering synthesizer lines over a grotesque march. In the shortest tracks, Neu’s influence is felt most strongly.

The style shifts again for Future World (Thrill Jockey, 1999). The most prominent elements are vocals, though always electronically processed, catchy electronic keyboard motifs (never so ear-catching before), and the rhythms of the rhythm section (never so simple).
The album opens with a schizoid guitar solo, 1999, reminiscent of the chaotic improvisations that opened Von Lmo’s concerts. Television Eyes continues with rhythmic progressions in their finest “Teutonic” style, though its divine geometry is disrupted by two melodies: a piercing vocal line and an airy organ line. The rhythmic drive is even more powerful on Future World, and the nursery-rhyme-like vocal (still robotically warped) is more immediate. Trans Am could be seen as a cross between Devo and Neu.
Greater cohesion benefits the instrumental tracks only when the jaws of City In Flames open wide, plunging into grindcore and Chrome territory; generally, however, this is an album of futuristic “little songs.” Even the concluding suite, Sad And Young, evokes more Roxy Music (Central European decadence) than Can.
There’s also room for a Frank Zappa-worthy instrumental novelty, Cocaine Computer, a disco-style funk built on the sounds of machines, and for the atmospheric synth-pop of Runners Standing Still, a ballad more suited to a Spandau Ballet record.
Much less experimental than its predecessors, more organized and accessible, more serious and less humorous, sung rather than purely instrumental, focused on (short) songs rather than (long) pieces, Future World perhaps marks a change in direction for one of the boldest careers of the era.

Who Do We Think You Are (Spunk, 1999) is a mini-album that sounds like a less serious affair that pokes fun at their own innovations and at their idols.

Trans AM's Philip Manley is also the mind behind the instrumental project Golden, which developed slowly since 1993 over the course of three singles (Golden Chet's Jalopy, Victory Is Ours). With a little help from his friends Six Finger Satellite , Golden (Slowdime, 1998) is surprisingly a rock record, which tones down Trans AM's experiments. One can still hear Can in the convoluted geometry of the songs, but the focus is on Manley's own record collection and in particular hard-rocking bands of the 1970s such as Black Sabbath and ZZ Top (Good Hope). As it spirals down Manley's memory lane, the album sounds closer and closer to Sonny Sharrock's hard-jazz.

Baja Grip is the highlight of Super Golden Original Movement (Slowdime, 1999), an album which leaves largely behind Manley's obsessions with hard-rock and tackles progressive-rock, ambient house and world-music.

Golden's third album, the concept Golden Summer (Slowdime, 2000), is even more surprising, as it delves into southern boogie and hard rock but with an ever increasing obsession for progressive-rock and art-rock attitudes. The rhythm section of drummer Jon Theodore and bassist Ian Eagleson frames with gusto the dual guitar haze. When the guitars sprint at raga speed, the quartet recalls the wild jamming of the Mahavishnu Orchestra. But Golden's fourth album, Apollo Stars (National, 2002), is mere imitation where the previous albums where revisitation of 1970s sounds.

You Can Always Get What You Want (Thrill Jockey, 2000), a collection of EPs and rarities, works as an excellent anthology of Trans Am's career. It shows how their music is rooted in progressive and German rock of the 1970s (Soft Machine's percolating and dissonant jazz scores highlight American Kooter, Neu's madly percussive music propels Simulacrum, both 1993 tracks) and it displays the band's erudite take on music making, a praxis that waives any pretension of entertainment in favor of a careful dissection of constituent elements.
Illegal Ass and Koln previously appeared on a 1996 EP, one of their stronger moments. Illegal Ass is possibly their most subtle essay on rhtyhm. Koln is a tone poem that mixes eastern motives, metallic industrial rhythm, weird noises, gothic organ drones.
Another rarity, the single Strong Sensations, betrays the leader's obsession for hard rock.
Included are also three tracks from Surrender To The Night (Thrill Jockey, 1997).
While not as compelling as their major works, this album is a good introduction to the ensemble's compositional technique.

On Red Line (Thrill Jockey, 2000) 21 tracks (71 minutes) of Trans Am's futuristic rock and roll are enough to betray their true inspirations: Suicide (the panzer-grade exorcism of I'm Coming Down) and Devo (I Want It All, with filtered, robotic vocals and symphonic electronics). Slow Response (massive beat, eerie choir, Led-Zeppelian guitar riff) and Shady Groove (tribal beat, electronica, sax solo) are a skewed version of new wave, deformed by the lens of conceptual art.
Actually, the instrumental, noise-jazz bacchanal of Village In Bubbles is reminiscent of Weasels-era Zappa, and the orchestral nonsense of Don't Bundle Me is reminiscent of Uncle Meat-era Zappa.
At the same time, an unusual dose of violence (the industrial ballet Polizei, the Sonny Sharrock-ian jazz-rock guitar assault of Play In The Summer, the frenzied rock and roll of Ragged Agenda) shows the darker side of Trans Am. Trans Am's catastrophic visions, though, are restrained.
Something is missing: the band often seem direction-less, shooting before aiming, uncertain and absent-minded. The 10-minute suite The Dark Gift drifts from a dreamy piece for acoustic guitar in the vein of John Fahey to a convoluted avant-jazz jam to a majestic prog-rock symphonic finale. The ear-piercing drones of For Now And Forever, the rhythmic metamorphoses of Talk You All Tight, the cheap electronic effects of Where Do You Want To Fuck Today, the minimalistic undulations of Lunar Landing are cryptic compositions that indulge, more than usual, in intellectual doodling.

TA (Thrill Jockey, 2002), Trans Am's sell-out album, sounds like a parody of 1980s' synth-pop, replete with silly ditties such as Cold War and Basta (that borrows from funk carioca). Half of the songs are sung and the results are, at best, amateurish (the hip-hoppish Party Station, Infinite Wavelength). Their instrumental genius has completely disappeared from Afternight and Bonn, which are the least obvious compositions here. Looking back, this facile sound merely completes a progression that led from the kraut/progressive-rock of the early albums to the new-age feeling of Red Line. Looking back, Trans Am may have been the most over-rated band of post-rock.

Liberation (Thrill Jockey, 2004) is a political concept that, like most political concepts, is sloppy music for rudimentary politics. The agit-prop sound collage of Uninvited Guest and Divine Invasion is so dull that one gets more drawn into the samples. But these are no Public Enemy or Tackhead. Total Information Awareness, Outmoder and White Rhino spice up the proceedings with a few aggressive beats, but any kid with a drum machine can do the same. The songs that hark back to 1980s' synth-pop (Pretty Close to the Edge, Idea Machine, Music for Dogs, and especially Remote Control) fare much better than the pretentious commentary. Trans Am must be paid by George W Bush's reelection campaign.

Returning to Trans Am's original (instrumental) premise after two inane detours, Sex Change (2007) sounded like a lightweight version of their Red Line, in which the Babelic confusion of styles borders on parody instead of tragedy. Their smooth stylistic game runs the gamut from ambient pop muzak (First Words) to industrial-metal music (Shining Path, Triangular Pyramid). None of the pieces sounds "ambitious", as they all content themselves with stating their identity and quickly coming to an end. There is no epic endeavour to refound music or to give higher meanings to sound. Trans Am simply entertains, in its own oddball manner.

What Day Is It Tonight? (2009) documents live performances from 1993 to 2008.

In their attempt to become more accessible, Trans Am ended up aping the prog-rock and psych-rock heroes of the 1970s on Thing (2010) with pieces like Please Wait, Heaven's Gate, Interstellar Drift and Space Dock, but these are mere sketches, not full-blown suites.

Phil Manley's Life Coach (Thrill Jockey, 2011) was devoted to brainy albeit touching prog-rock structures, such as the nine-minute Night Visions.

Norcal Values (Thrill Jockey, 2011) documents a collaboration between Manley and Earthless' Isaiah Mitchell.