Forever Einstein was the trio led by Chuck Vrtacek, an obscure and brilliant prophet of 21st-century rock who lived in isolation in his small Connecticut town. Alone, he produced experimental albums of great value, and with Forever Einstein he created a purely instrumental form of progressive rock in the years when the genre was no longer fashionable.
His style is less convoluted and tortuous than that of the genre’s intellectuals. One senses the spirit of the small-town bourgeoisie, of a domestic and semi-rural environment—the same spirit, all things considered, that inspires so much country music. It is therefore not surprising that, alongside learned and austere minimalist and improvised passages, Vrtacek produces verve and humor. Few progressive-rock works are so un-serious, and yet so joyful. The “dry” timbre of his guitar, and the frenetic way he delivers chords, represent a novelty. Vrtacek has clearly undertaken formal studies of the instrument.

Charles Vrtacek (born 1953, real name William Vassiliades, of Cypriot origin, raised in Connecticut) began playing in all kinds of bands at a very young age, but only in the 1980s—after a humble career as a librarian, typesetter, and clerk—did he begin recording his music.

Vrtacek recorded Victory Through Grace (Leisure Time, 1981) on one of the first multi-track recorders, without drum machines, sampling, stereo effects, or anything else; yet all those techniques are present in embryo, simulated in intent if not in execution. It is a festival of imagination, from the electronic cacophonies of To Hold Walls Together (Morton Subotnick in a raga-psychedelic version) to the almost “cosmic” flow of whistles, rumbles, pulsations, and radio interference in How They Spoke To The Deaf. Vrtacek is, however, far from being a pedantic experimenter with electronic techniques: his art is above all comic, full of surreal inventions, such as the western soundtrack theme of The Waters or the driving Arabic dance for loops and found sounds in Pontos. Many tracks are meticulously timed, just long enough to convey the gag intended (the sixth and seventh tracks are both titled Sink and are truly only twenty seconds of a sink running).
Thus, the art of collage is also revived: in A Foreign Gun, an oriental synth motif is intertwined and overlaid with faint guitar rock and a background voice recitation; in Muscles To Mousetrap, over a jazz rhythm flow cavalry trumpet, a siren, radio messages…

Days And Days (Leisure Time, 1982) took two years to gestate, but it does not match the inventiveness of its predecessor. Collage tracks like Picture This and electronic pieces like An Infinite Number, while interesting from a technical standpoint, have lost the verve and amateur humor of the previous album. What makes up for it are magical music-box pieces like Cast No Shadow When You Leave and New Age watercolors like The Day The Sun Burned Out.

The first two albums were anthologized on Days Of Grace (Dom America, 1992).

Following in the same year came Now Available, a parody of the Residents. Then, in 1984, Monkey On A Hard Roll (ReR), featuring drummer John Roulat and saxophonist Brian Ognan. Vrtacek found in this lineup the ideal vehicle to transform his insights into actual "songs," into fully realized compositions. Ognan dominates with his exuberant rhythm’n’blues flourishes the radiant overture of the album, 202, and the romantic, driving ska of It's Alive, two of the happiest themes of Vrtacek’s career. Other moments of progressive, composerly singable and danceable music occur in the frenetic, swinging Thirties-style dance of Lucky Strike, the relaxed, nocturnal, and vaguely Eastern sound of A Dance For Vance, and the splendidly comic sonic sketch Stinko The Clown, all of which are masterpieces. That kind of instrumental music, with a driving rhythm, dissonant guitar interjections, and scorching sax solos (Lost), is also capable of more delicate and tender moods (Wave, I Remember) and musichall-style sketches (America The Beautiful).
It is a formally impeccable album, moving across a wide spectrum of emotions—from grotesque to tragic, from sentimental to contemplative—and moreover containing enough brilliant compositions to place it a cut above the average rock of the era, making it a candidate for the best instrumental album of the decade. Yet it went completely unnoticed.

No surprise then that in 1985 Vrtacek went through a deep depressive crisis. Learning To Be Silent (Cordelia, 1986), played almost entirely solo, documents a completely changed artist: instead of comic cacophonies, tragic melodicism triumphs; instead of collage and guitar, keyboards—and in particular synths—dominate. Erik Satie is the most pronounced influence on Vrtacek’s new phase. The first side, dedicated to a series of negative mental states, opens with the delicate impressionism for guitar played like a harp in Poison, confirming that this is an album of tiptoe minimalism (Tumbling), of elemental melodies performed with cosmic sadness (Thinking), of Latin-infused jazz tinged with saudade (Inside), of slow-motion gamelan ballets (Revenge), of almost imperceptible serenades (Emily); a kind of semiotic appendix to the lessons of miniaturist Brian Eno.
The most experimental aspect is found in Song For Marcel, a dreamlike concerto for piano, xylophone, and Hawaiian guitar; in Breathing, a Schaeffer-style micro-piece created by electronically manipulating human breath; in Silence, a music-box set to the rhythm of a (metaphorical) ticking clock; and in Fly, a mash-up of unsettling galactic noises.

If Silence is the metaphor that best represents the album, then perhaps Tumbling, Thinking, and Song For Marcel are its high points.
A highly personal album, suffused with a dark, almost "Leopardian" melancholy and an introspective philosophy of the cruelty of human fate, Learning To Be Silent serves precisely the role its title declares in Vrtacek’s trajectory: whereas in previous albums the composer “spoke” a lot—being extroverted and communicative, playing extensively with sound—here he stops “speaking,” retreats into an hermetic “silence,” and uses sound solely to create moods. A master of sketches, fragments, and the deliberately unfinished, this Satie of rock writes some of the most poetic pages of those years.

From the same period comes the material that was meant to make up Nothing Lasts Forever, Nothing Ends Completely (still unreleased). These are improvised solo piano pieces, inspired by the music (reggae, soul, blues) that Vrtacek played at night with a typical small bar band. They are fragments, aphorisms, unfinished works that possess the depth of classical music, the melodicism of new age, and the warmth of folk. (These pieces would be orchestrated by Biota in 1993).

Vrtacek’s fortunes unexpectedly rebounded in 1988, when he released When Heaven Comes To Town (Recommended), almost entirely solo, with one side of short introspective pieces for guitar and keyboards, and the eponymous suite on the second side. Vrtacek was rediscovered and became a cult name. The suite, in particular, is a sprawling repository of debris from our “sonic” civilization, a festival of sampled sounds, “found” noises, improvised interludes, electronic effects, all meticulously refined and gradually coalescing into clumps of menacing frequencies. (It also reprises some ideas from Nothing Lasts Forever).
The aphorisms on the first side belong to a neutral, icy genre that is neither “classical” nor “ambient.” It is delicate, impersonal music, scrupulously arranged and performed, like music boxes played in slow motion. The themes are sometimes cheerfully singable (Minus My Friend), sometimes halfway between baroque and Zen (History Of The Heart), sometimes gently romantic (Part Of Me Here), and sometimes menacingly cosmic and metaphysical (Preparing The Bridge). Throughout, there is a transcendent, almost mystical quality that was absent from the “jokes” of the early albums. Saying Goodbye To The Beauty And Complexity Of Life On Earth, a piece of almost static minimalism yet simultaneously liturgically intense, has a programmatic title. Once again, Erik Satie is the guiding spirit of these brief melodies, making this album a continuation of Learning.
Closer to the Dadaist pieces of the Residents than to Eno’s minimal architectures, closer to Ashley’s pop “works” than to Wyatt’s poems, Vrtacek’s project nonetheless invents an original way of using sound to communicate elemental and universal emotions.

Nick Didkovsky, Steve Maclean, and Chuck Vrtacek collaborate on Flies In The Face Of Logic (Pogus, 1994), a glorious example of musical Dadaism (the album begins with the sound of a piano dropped from a 30-meter crane), alternating between computers, samplers, and prepared pianos in a semi-serious tribute to twentieth-century piano music.

The two masterpieces of Vrtacek, Learning To Be Silent and When Heaven Comes To Town, were collected on Silent Heaven (Cuneiform, 1996).

In 1990, Vrtacek, with John Roulat on drums and Marc Sichel on bass, formed Forever Einstein, a purely instrumental trio that resembles an amateur version of late King Crimson with the cabaret humor of Gong. In reality, Artificial Horizon (Cuneiform), their first album (the track listing on the cover is incorrect), picks up where Monkey On A Hard Roll left off, but with a much more pronounced experimental and irreverent verve (albeit without Ognan’s magical saxophone). The spectrum of genres and ideas embraced by the twenty tracks of this album is vast.
The piano pieces, A Long Time Ago (first part of the first track), Hamburgers For Everybody (second part of the fourth track), and Taking My Half Sister To The Zoo In Paris (thirteenth track), are playful wordless romances reminiscent of the music boxes of the Penguin Café Orchestra. Women On The Move (third track) and A Moral Dilemma (eighth track) descend from Zappa’s orchestral overtures. Asian Women Desire Correspondence (second part of the first track) and Rainbowhead consist of a series of guitar jokes and variations, functioning as simple follow-up experiments. In Electric Pants (fourth track), a powerful electric hard rock riff emerges, and in Eating Pie With Einstein, an even more electric Sharrock-style jazz-rock spreads out.
The masterpieces are a compromise among all these styles—they are surreal sketches that retain many conventions of pop music, subverting above all its very purpose. In Hate Me Again (fifth track), the guitar constructs a martial soundtrack reminiscent of a Western film, comically accelerated into a near-rockabilly, counterpointed by the bass imitating the tuba of a marching band. Equally amusing (and solemn) is the singable guitar theme in The Iron Boot Of Stupidity Will March Across Your Face (second part of the ninth track). Even in Stock Footage (tenth track), Vrtacek attempts to craft a jazz-rock version of Leo Kottke and Duane Eddy.
Vrtacek delights in manipulating the amplified acoustic guitar, supported by a respectable power trio. The mood is entirely different—much closer to the “comedic” spirit of his early work than to the “tragic” tone of Heaven.
Forever Einstein represents a return to communicativity after the darkly introspective phase of his solo albums. Their primitivism constitutes a variant of the miniaturist stream that also includes Fred Frith and Jad Fair, but they are in some ways more “cultured” and “classical.”

In 1992, the second Forever Einstein album, Opportunity Crosses the Bridge, was released. Vrtacek pushed his penchant for sketch-like composition to the extreme: the work is composed of no fewer than twenty-nine miniatures of jazz-rock that are as wild as they are unfinished. Each piece just manages to acquire a hint of personality before being swallowed by the next. The rhythms of the individual tracks are dizzying, and the pace at which they follow one another is dizzying in its own right. Compared to the clownish tone of the first album, the nonsense of this new effort expresses different ambitions. Vrtacek remains a sharp critic of American society, but here he does so in a more deliberate manner.
Among the most amusing episodes are surreal quadrilles such as My Friends Made Fun Of My Pants, Big Fun In The Basement, Lift And Separate, and Team Fight Song, where his fondness for popular music is most evident. Although the syncopated jazz-rock of King Crimson often emerges, and at times the frenzy recalls the rowdy and chaotic escapades of the Magic Band, the obvious guiding spirit of the trio is Fred Frith. The main difference between Vrtacek and his English mentor is that Vrtacek leans toward a straightforward “nursery rhyme” approach, rather than abstract “gimmicks.” The gags are thus endless, and almost all successful. Those under a minute long (each dedicated to an element, from hydrogen to mercury, from “einsteinium” to “europium”…) are perhaps even more brilliant and could form a delightful catalog of improbable harmonies for Zappa’s circus; who would certainly envy the sharpest parodies (for example, the march of This Is America). Opportunity may be less musical than Artificial Horizon, but it is even more of an aberration.

After a long hiatus, Vrtacek dusts off the Forever Einstein name for One Thing After Another (Cuneiform, 1998). The album builds progressively. Big Sky Mind opens it in a somewhat predictable manner, with the classic (and slightly dated) Canterbury-school progressive rock, rich in tempo changes and acrobatic counterpoints, although the tone is already unusually playful.
The Girl With The Flame Maple Chest introduces the first childlike theme, a carefree quadrille played at high speed, paving the way for the nursery-rhyme charm and music-box feel of Toy Boat Attacked By Toy Pirates On Real Water, one of the most singable and entertaining tracks on the album.
Oh Lord Please Bless The Rocket House sketches the first Brazilian-flavored moves, which Curly Get The Ladder accentuates in a more jazzy and syncopated context.
Imagination fully takes over from dogma in the album’s most unorthodox tracks: Maniacs From The Fourth Dimension, whose tribal surf music alternates with disjointed swinging passages and is turned into a nightmare by the spectral guitar reverbs; and Bad Weather, a swinging jam that launches into an acrobatic ballroom rhythm, only to be overwhelmed by the atonal chatter of the guitars.
It is Vrtacek’s “lightest” album, as light as his albums can be. Undoubtedly, it is his closest approach to instrumental beach rock.

The revival of Forever Einstein also benefits Vrtacek’s solo career, which had been dormant for ten years. Fifteen Mnemonic Devices (Odd Size, 1999), composed between 1986 and 1994 and largely recorded at home with occasional help from Nick Didkovsky of Dr Nerve, opens new horizons. The track titles, read in sequence, tell a story, so it can be assumed that this is a concept album, even though the music itself is far from continuous.
The approach remains that of a dadaist collage of sounds, but the fifteen fragments employ a much wider and more varied spectrum of compositional techniques. She Has Crazy Dreams samples and loops the voice over a background of wooden strikes from string instruments, languid electronic keyboard drones, and intermittent clamor. When Morning Comes forges a hypnotic atmosphere from the ticking of a clock and a metallic guitar glissando. From the dissonant chamber music of Her Visions Remain Vivid, a minimalist pulse of piano, guitar, and percussion gradually emerges.
Amid so many cerebral pieces, it is, all things considered, a relief to hear the almost surf-style theme of She Takes A Walk, and the soundtrack parody that is There Is A Rustling Sound.
While not all the experiments succeed, and nearly all sound “unfinished,” and while the album lacks the uniform majesty of his concrete music masterpieces, there are still enough ideas to constitute multiple theses in composition. More than an inspired album, unified by a theme and mood, it feels like an album of ideas, arising from different occasions, and therefore more of the mind than the heart.

Vrtacek has composed the music for a colossal soundtrack of the inner world. All his works are first-rate, but When Heaven Comes To Town, Monkey On A Hard Roll, Learning To Be Silent, and Artificial Horizon truly stand out above all the productions of the era.

Few musicians know how to make "non-music" like he does.

Forever Einstein's Down With Gravity (Cuneiform, 2000) is a concept album of sort, devoted to a sophisticated parody of popular music. The ten tracks, with titles such as Maybe spending the rest of your life in a madhouse will teach you some manners and My Mule Wouldn't Walk In The Mud So I Had To Put 17 Bullets In Her, are collages of sounds ispired liberally by TV soundtracks, surf hits, the music hall and even videogames. Maybe Spending... boasts a nostalgic fast-paced guitar melody, the kind one finds Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet's albums, grafted onto a jazz rhythm. My Mule... features a western theme propelled by a disco beat. And so forth. Vrtacek's guitar playing is far more traditional than usual, and the tempo shifts of the rhythm section follow suit, disciplined into a song format. The music sometimes meanders aimlessly, unsure undecided between straightforward parody and intellectual, postmodern rumination. It takes the bluesy I'm Going To Cut The Soles Off My Shoes, and its charleston coda, to revitalize the album. Better To Be Early Than Lift Your Leg features the most subtle deconstruction of a surf theme, that leads to an elegant King Crimson-style jamming. The band put too much thinking into this album. If you want to make a joke, make it quick and short. If you want to write a treatise, take your time and ponder. But Forever Einstein decided to write a treatise on joke, and it came out neither profound nor funny. The epic-length A Fruit Pie Salesman (18 minutes) parades different styles of guitar strumming. The piece is basically a sequence of metamorphoses that showcase Vrtacek's cunning perception of the role of guitar in music. Sort of an interpretative tour of the guitar. When he gets serious, he has very few rivals.

Forever Einstein's fifth album, Racket Science (Cuneiform, 2005), still performed by a trio, with John Roulat on drums and newcomer Kevin Gerety on bass (Charles O'Meara being simply the new name of Chuck Vrtacek), seemed to abandon their usual prog-rock turf and venture into several new directions. Like all transitional albums, it has its ups and downs, but, when it works, the results are breathtaking: the tinkling country & western bravado of It's a Good Thing I Don't Have Super-Brain Powers, the languid Morriconian blues They're Portable, the jazzy fantasia of There's Some Milk In The Fridge, etc. The frantic pseudo-surf theme of You're Living in a World of Make-Believe yields a shimmering tapestry of guitar notes woven by an off-kilter intelligence that is reminiscent of the Raybeats. I Wish I Had Me Some of Them Miracle Smart Pills alternates between a breezy Fleshtones-like fanfare and a ponderous Yes-like apotheosis. Vrtacek's trademark sense of humour benefits from the new musical stance, as witnessed in It's Almost Impossible to Concentrate In This Cafe'. Even when it doesn't work (the lengthy I Got My Picture Taken is a bit pointless), Vrtacek/O'Meara acrobatically switches guitar every few seconds (check the two minutes of Every Word Out Of Your Mouth for maximum disorientation), and the music itself is no less unstable Even after so many years of playing, it is reassuring that Vrtacek can still be so restless and erratic (mostly a compliment).

Under his real name of Charles O'Meara, in the 1990s he joined the Mnemonists (aka Biota) and played piano on several of their recordings.

Charles O'Meara died in 2018.