Welcome to the New Artists Page. This page definitely represents the 'thrill of discovery.' These are new artists putting out their own product. I hope you'll frequent this page often to check them out. When these artists make it big (and they will), these early recordings of theirs will definitely be collectors' items. Get them while you can!
Paul Adams/Wonder Dancing on Global Bop ....CD $11.99
Multi-instrumentalist Paul Adams takes the concept of independent musicianship to a higher level. Not only does he compose, perform and produce his music and release it on his own label, he even makes many of the instruments he plays! The music you'll find on these two albums is progressive, ambient, world groove and at all times exotic. These albums are passionate and energetic travelogues of musical styles and influences from various cultures - Latin and African polyrhythms with Native American chants and harmonica, Spanish and Gypsy improvisations, 5 string banjo with jazz trumpet,or Gamalon Gongs in a Romantic setting with electric guitars all coming together to make some kind of sonic sense.
Andrew Booker/Ahead ....import mini-CD $9.99
Andrew Booker is a brilliant young singer/songwriter/percussionist from England. As you listen to his his music, The Blue Nile comes most immediately to mind. But there is much more going on. The songs have the tunefulness and complexity to sharpen an appetite weaned on prog. Ahead focuses on the minutiae of the everyday; throwing a mournful, lucid blue light over one's innumerable small deep aches and the ebb of trapped feelings, blowing them up like neon signs on the night sky.
There's no prog triumphalism here: this is a modern angst, close to the heart yet oddly distant, a welling uneasy sadness without a clear target. Call it twenty-first century urban blues - despite its glossy digital sheen (none of the fuzzy comfort of analogue here) and despite the sequencing that makes the music as cold and clean as a satellite and throws its loneliness into sharp relief, Ahead is ultimately an album about being alive... another vulnerable Everyman adrift in a world from which creature comforts have drained the soul. He could be any of us. And that, in the end, is what makes this mini-album so special - its ability to make this music speak for people again. Ahead is a shout for the human spirit as the cogs of the city close around it, diary notes from the heart scratched on the walls of a glittering wasteland. Dan Chinn - Progress
If you like Zappa, if you love Zappa, well so does David. And his Xen work reminds me of the best of Zappa's instrumental synclavier work. But unlike the crowd of imitators who rarely make their way past the surface, David's work demonstrates a deep understanding of the roots and sources of music that influenced Zappa. From there David blossoms to create his own musical statement. Fans of electronic music should also check out Synergy and Geoff Downes.
| David Bagsby/Ephemeron ....CD $12.99 | David Bagsby/Translator ....double CD $21.99 |
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Two new releases from electronics explorer, David Bagsby. Ephemeron is a collection of humanly impossible poyrhythmic hierarchies. A minimum of three concurrent time signatures are occuring at any given time. Translator is a follow up to The Aviary and is a collection of field recordings digitized and orchestrated. The actual sounds of animals and locales control the melody and rhythm and Bagsby choosing the sounds (like scanning a photo and changing the colors). Most of Nature's music is too subtle for normal perception. Via digital intervention, these songs become more overt.
Xen/Master of Night ....CD $11.99
Xen is a duet between David Bagsby & Kurt Rongey. The music is a symbiosis of modern symphonic and scientific techniques, (serialism, fibonacci series, stochastics) applied to a rock angle of attack. The matrices provide structural cohesion but the overall principle is to make the music enjoyable. This is the second Xen release from this duo. "The outer fringe of progressive rock... Anything might happen at any moment... If you chopped up some Zappa, some Stockhausen, and some ELP with a lawn mower and spliced the tape segments together at random, it would fit right in with XEN." - Keyboard
Various Artists/Happy Hour for a Pack of Screaming Monkeys ....CD $11.99
David Bagsby produced this amazing tribute to cartoon music ubermensch Raymond Scott and also performs on a number of tracks in a number of different guises. Chances are good that you've never heard of Raymond Scott, although it's likely you've heard a vast majority of his music. Carl Stalling, music director for Warner Bros. cartoons (Bugs Bunny, et. al.) became enthralled with Scott's output and profusely entwined his tunes into the collective subconscious of anyone who's been around since the '30's. With titles like 'Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals' and 'War Dance for Wooden Indian's' it's easy to see why Stalling was lured in...not to mention that the music is equally as vivid. Fans of Scott's music include Igor Stravinsky, Jascha Heifetz, Elvis Costello, Henry Rollins, Art Blakey, Kronos Quartet, Rush, They Might Be Giants, Devo and many, many more. "What can you say about a man who inspired cartoon melodies and bebop, invented Frank Zappa and electronic music, and still found time to work for Motown?" - Andy Partridge of XTC
David Bagsby/Xen ....CD $11.99
David Bagsby's and Kurt Rongey's first Xen release is strongly reminiscent of the best of Frank Zappa's synclavier work. "...the ferocity of the playing and the forcefulness of the drum tracks drives the music with a motor energy that only a handful of classic prog bands ever achieved." - Keyboard Magazine
Zahab - pronounced like Captain Ahab. This is heady, 20th Century music. If you're a fan of the Kronos Quartet, then you need to pick up Stubborn Beauties by violinist/composer Roger Zahab. It includes his own compositions as well as others by some of today's top modern composers, some written expressly for Roger. This is what they call 'Mind Candy.' Roger later participated the double disc set A Chance Operation - The John Cage Tribute along with such luminaries as Laurie Anderson, John Cale, Kronos Quartet, Meredith Monk, Frank Zappa and more. You'll find that along with Roger's second album, Thirteen Harmonies, over on my Vanity Page.
Roger Zahab/Stubborn Beauties ....CD $11.99
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