Musical Alternatives

February 14, 2005

Nirvana and Radiohead Adopt a Musical Child

February 14, 2005 (Albany, NY) -- Geno K, a guitarist, bass and keyboard player & programmer will release his entirely self-produced new album The Human Geno Project on February 22, 2005. The release will be followed by a massive national tour by The Geno K Experience. "I listened to the whole disk - I enjoyed listening to the male and female vocal trade-offs - I've always found that mixed gender dual vocal dynamic to be quite interesting," Andy Gallo, Program Director of Crumbs Radio says.

Geno K, aka Eugene Kim, is a 5-year veteran of the NYC music scene. As bassist for Shaker, Stalone & the Sleavze (all one band), he has performed at venues such as The Bitter End, Mercury Lounge, and Bowery Ballroom, as well as countless other clubs. Geno also founded and hosted an Open Mic Showcase at the popular DTUT's CafÈ on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for 2 years. Relocating back to his hometown, Albany, NY, Geno K finished a 2-year long solo project with a number of musician friends. Conveniently titled, The Human Geno Project, the album is the culmination of songs that, similar to it's like-named predecessor, is a multi-disciplinary approach to achieving an understanding of the human makeup, wrapped in 2-4 minute pop packages.

Genre-labeling, sounds like-artist identification is not recommended. If you must, think Radiohead and the Foo Fighters adopting a musical child, with Tom Waits as the baby-sitter. "I'd like to mimic the longevity of a Tom Waits, integrity of Leonard Cohen, the live atmosphere of a Flaming Lips show and take the reins from bands like Radiohead & Nirvana to continue to break the barriers of our bland, ever deteriorating pop music landscape," Geno explains.

The Human Geno Project will be available through CDBaby from February 22.

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February 08, 2005

Anubian Lights' Wild Winter

Phantascope is the new release from art-rock artists Anubian Lights. Wild Winter is likely to turn into a very "green" Spring. [Anubian Lights Wild Winter Video | Anubian Lights Real Audio Streams]

Anubian Lights Essentials

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MICHELLE SHOCKED PLANS TRILOGY OF THREE NEW ALBUMS, ALL DUE OUT JUNE 7

A rock album produced by Dusty Wakeman; an all-star tribute to Memphis Minnie with Lucinda Williams & Rickie Lee Jones; and an album of Western Swing-ified Disney

Shocked confirmed for SXSW showcase, panel in March

LOS ANGELES – 2005 will be a big year for Michelle Shocked, who will release a new trilogy of albums in June on her own Mighty Sound label through Ryko Distribution.
The two-time Grammy nominee will present the “JAMS Project,” a series of producer collaborations, which continues the "American Trilogy" concept of her first three Mercury albums.

The three new albums -- titled Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell; The Memphis Minnies; and Baby Mine -- chronicle a tumultuous time of life -- including her recent divorce. This isn’t to imply that the songs are bitter. In fact, to the contrary they’re executed with humor, imagination, irony and empowerment -- and in voices most have never heard from Michelle. There’s rock and after-hours blues and hardcore punk and twang shading her sly lyrics.

The first of these albums, Don't Ask, Don't Tell, is a rock album, full of guitar and guts, produced by man-to-watch Dusty Wakeman (Dwight Yoakam, Anne McCue.) The story of what she’s gone through is in there, but so are a lot of other stories and emotions. Early comparisons have been drawn to Richard Thompson’s Shoot out the Lights with the chromatic eclecticism of an album like Los Lobos’ Kiko.

The second album titled The Memphis Minnies was inspired by Shocked’s devotion to ‘30s/’40s country blues matriarch Memphis Minnie. Guest artists who contributed to the project include Rickie Lee Jones, Lucinda Williams, Alice Stuart, Lydia Pense, Victoria Williams, Anne McCue and Janet Robin, with more still coming on board. Producer is Mark Howard (Bob Dylan, Lucinda Williams.)

And the third album, Baby Mine, is a Western swing twist on Disney music produced by Nick Forster. For young and old alike, the album is a collaboration with Disney artist David Willardson, with whom she will combine performances of painting and music.

According to Shocked, "I never really intended to release three albums at one time. But I do tend to think in concepts of trilogies, tryptichs, trios. It seems like a complete cycle to me."

And you're hearing it here first: There are three more albums right behind these, completely different than these, including gospel/electronica and Latin/blues and New Orleans style jazz. She says, "You can't stop creative momentum. When it hits, you gotta roll with it..."

Shocked is set to perform at the South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival in Austin in March, date and venue TBA. She will also speak on the conference’s Artist Panel, also to be TBA. [PRESS RELEASE]

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February 07, 2005

Columbia Records Readies Release Of Joe Perry

Aerosmith Guitarist, Songwriter Joe Perry working at The Boneyard

Columbia Records is set to release Joe Perry, the eagerly-awaited new solo album from rock icon Joe Perry, whose incendiary guitar work and songwriting for Aerosmith helped earn the group its ongoing multi-platinum status, four Grammy Awards, and induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (2001). Joe Perry is in stores on Tuesday, May 3.

Recorded at the Boneyard--Perry's basement home studio in Boston--Joe Perry achieves a smoldering intensity via Perry's signature guitar riffs and unmistakable deep vocals. The album's 13 tracks include 11 new Joe Perry original compositions as well as covers of the Doors' "The Crystal Ship" and Woody Guthrie's "Vigilante Man."

"It didn't occur to me to put this record out until Aerosmith decided to take a year off," says Joe about his new album, which opens with the album's first focus track, "Shakin' My Cage." Joe Perry showcases Joe's vocals on songs like "Push Comes To Shove" and "Dying To Be Free" and his musical chops on instrumentals like "Mercy" and "Twilight."

"It's as honest a record as you're gonna get," says Joe Perry, revealing the nature of this true solo work. In fact, Joe sings all the vocals and plays all the guitars, bass and keyboard parts on Joe Perry. Perry also produced the album, which was co-produced by Paul Caruso, who recorded and engineered the disc and played drums throughout. Don't look for a who's who list of guest players here, except for a friend who teaches at the Berklee School of Music--"an old-school analog synth guy, Chris Noise, who plays the string part on one ballad, 'Ten Years,'" says Joe Perry.

"Seems like these days that when people go off and do a solo record, it's more the norm to bring in a bunch of all-star friends, but I already have the amazing fortune to play with one of the best singers in the world and the hardest rocking band on the planet," Joe offers, "but also, the way these songs developed from the demos, they already had the sound I was looking for. And it was a refreshing challenge to work this way."

Joe Perry is the fourth solo album from the multi-talented Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee. His previous works--as the "Joe Perry Project"--include the self-produced Let The Music Do The Talking (1980) and Once A Rocker, Always A Rocker (1984), along with I've Got The Rock 'N' Rolls Again (1981), all of which were recorded at a time when Joe was on hiatus from Aerosmith. The new album differs from those discs in several key aspects.

"This one didn't come from anywhere near the same space as those albums," Joe explains. "I mean, I had fun doing them and they certainly fulfilled a creative need, but this record reflects the experience of 20 more years of writing and recording and making my way on this planet."

With his home studio located just downstairs from the living quarters, the music on Joe Perry was created organically and recorded under no deadlines or pressure. In fact, the genesis of the album goes back 10 years--the song "Ten Years" was written by Joe as a tenth anniversary gift to his wife, Billie Paulette, with no intention of it ever being heard by the public. The rest of the album was written by Joe as he worked on Aerosmith's Nine Lives, Just Push Play and 2004's acclaimed blues-fest Honkin' On Bobo, the "four star" (Rolling Stone) album on which Joe sang lead vocals on two tracks.

"One day I was complaining about a lack of inspiration and my wife, Billie, in her role as muse, said, 'Get down and sing where you belong,'" says Joe. "I felt I busted loose and started singing where my voice was more natural as you can hear on the song 'Back Back Train' (from Honkin' On Bobo). I discovered a whole new place and it was a whole new vehicle for me. I found I was writing music better suited for my vocal range."

What about Joe Perry's lyrical inspiration for these tunes? "Well, most of the songs are love songs," he confesses. "Some of them are fast and some of them are slow, that's about it. You sing what you know."

Joe Perry's work with Aerosmith has resulted in an unending array of accolades and honors. Some key milestones over the past 30 years include: album sales exceeding 100 million copies; induction in Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2001; four Grammy Awards; 12 MTV Video Awards; two People's Choice Awards; six Billboard Music Awards; eight American Music Awards; 23 Boston Music Awards; and an Academy Award nomination for Best Song, "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" (from the soundtrack to "Armageddon").

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January 11, 2005

Jen Gloeckner - Miles Away

Hauntingly Beautiful, Miles Away by Jen Gloeckner

Artist Jen Gloekner's debut release, Miles Away, is a profoundly beatiful collection of songs; provocative, evocative and deeply visceral. Please watch for the forthcoming full review of Miles Away.

Please visit Jen's website: www.jengloeckner.com - Jen is one of the most impressive artists I have heard in years. She is extremely gifted.

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October 24, 2004

JENNIFER CUTTING RELEASES NEW CD OCEAN: Songs for the Night Sea Journey

OCEAN: Songs for the Night Sea Journey

In mythology and legend, the hero’s labors always take seven years, so it is apt that Jennifer Cutting’s new CD OCEAN: Songs for the Night Sea Journey was seven years in the making. Cutting, the genre-bending composer/bandleader who led D.C.-area British folk-rock band The New St. George from local to national acclaim, has gone to the roots of her English and Irish heritage to create Ocean, a collage of sea-inspired pieces exploring the rich symbolism of water and its themes of transition, transformation, and "The Hero’s Journey."

For Ocean, an ambitious transatlantic recording project requiring five sea crossings to complete, Cutting has convened a global orchestra of Celtic, pop, symphonic, and electronic musicians. Guest artists such as Maddy Prior and Peter Knight (Steeleye Span), the late Tony Cuffe (Ossian), Gabriel Yacoub, Dave Mattacks (Fairport Convention, XTC, Paul McCartney), Troy Donockley (Iona) and other leading lights from the British Isles and European scene are joined by D.C.-area luminaries Grace Griffith, John Jennings (Mary Chapin Carpenter band), Sue Richards, Zan McLeod, and others.

Ocean’s more ethereal tracks feature four different female vocalists: Maddy Prior and Polly Bolton from England; and Grace Griffith and Lisa Moscatiello from the U.S. Huge atmospheric sound canvases and the swirling interplay of acoustic and electronic instruments characterize Cutting’s original songs "Call of the Siren," "My Grief on the Sea," "Dissolving" and "The Sands of Time" (also the title cut of Grace Griffith’s newest album on Blix Street). In contrast, an energizing rock pulse infuses Cutting’s revisioning of a set of Irish traditional jigs, "Out on the Ocean / Rolling Waves," which feature her nimble button accordion playing. Her cover of the Steve Morse-penned Dixie Dregs instrumental "Sleep" transforms it from rock baroque to a soothing Celtic-style lullaby. Cutting’s archival sleuthing talent brings the rare Irish traditional gem "The Gladdest Breeze" to a wide audience for the first time since it was collected. "Forgiveness" is a stately folk-rock ballad with Hammond B-3 organ and soaring electric guitar solos that is closest in style to Cutting’s previous work with The New St. George. Fitting out Gustav Holst’s majestic "Jupiter" theme with an inspiring new text and custom translation into Donegal Irish, Cutting’s title track "Song for the Night Sea Journey" is certain to be much covered by other musicians. Bulgarian diva Tatiana Sarbinska and women’s group Slaveya lend their riveting Balkan vocals to the album’s electrifying techno-flavored finale "Neptune Reel / Woman of the House." After an intentional period of palate-cleansing silence, Cutting’s Swingle Singers-style collaboration with French musician Gabriel Yacoub on the Bach aria “If You Are Near” provides a serene postlude. Cutting is a composer/bandleader not only by birth tradition (grandfather Ernest Cutting was a conductor and talent scout for NBC in the 1930s, directing orchestras for Kate Smith, Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny, Jimmy Durante, Fred Astaire, Rudy Vallee, and many others); but also by training and inclination (she earned her Bachelor’s degree in orchestral and choral conducting). Cutting’s two grandfathers, one from England and the other from Ireland, were her greatest role models, and the inspiration for her attempt on Ocean to create the perfect synthesis of English and Irish traditions. In service to this vision, she selected mostly Irish melodies and texts, recording her arrangements of the Irish material with English artists. There is a certain daring in Cutting’s substitution of a Gaelic text for the British nationalist "I Vow to Thee My Country" text usually used for the Holst melody on Ocean’s title cut "Song for the Night Sea Journey." But, true to the folk process, Cutting, a true Anglo-Irish mulatto on neutral U.S. territory, matched the two simply because they sounded good together.

The making of Ocean was for Cutting an odyssey of epic proportions – a massive undertaking requiring seven years of composing, arranging, researching, fundraising, recording and mixing. Being determined to rival the quality of a major label project on an unsigned individual’s resources, and using artists on both sides of the Atlantic to achieve just the right marriage of sounds on each track meant working at a pace that was often frustratingly slow, and prone to technical snafus. Finding the money to fund such productions meant applying for grants and looking for sponsors, finishing one more song each time a grant was awarded or a patron gave her a loan. Research was also a central component in the development of the production. Digging up obscure lyrics from the Irish oral tradition, Latin phrases from medieval alchemical texts, and forgotten melodies from the manuscripts of turn-of-the-century folk music collectors was all in a day’s work for Cutting, who is also an ethnomusicologist at the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Cutting’s graduate training in ethnographic fieldwork came in handy when facing the logistical and technical challenges of recording in remote and sight-unseen locations across the U.K. Getting the job done meant hauling luggage, instruments, and fifty pounds of analog tape reels up and down stairwells in busy urban airports and rail stations, and pleading with officials not to X-ray the master tapes. Rural settings provided yet other challenges: on one recording trip, power outages caused by a flash thunderstorm lost ‘perfect takes’ of a vocal she’d been working all day to capture, and hailstones pelted her and her gear as she sank up to her ankles in liquefied manure while making her way across a singer’s farm in remotest Shropshire. Local fauna made their appearances, too. Sheep bleating outside the windows halted recording activities in one tiny rural studio, and the antique pedal organ tracks recorded in a Herefordshire studio all had to be scrapped because of the cooing of pigeons who had taken up residence inside the instrument.

Ocean is the product of Cutting’s longtime fascination with the intersection of music, mythology, psychology, and spirituality; a soul-searching work motivated equally by personal and world events. In late 1995, the breakup of The New St. George, the death of a close friend, and several other painful events precipitated for Cutting a several-year period of introspection and withdrawal from the music world. When she began to make music again, her sound had changed – the crisp edges of British folk-rock giving way to a more liquid sound palette and freer-flowing song structures. Cutting started recording demos in her studio again, dubbing her new project “Ocean,” after the new sound. She had no particular timeline, and the music was her own private balm. But the news that her lead singer Grace Griffith had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease gave Cutting a reason to shift into a higher gear. Says Cutting, “The subtitle of the CD is ‘Songs for the Night Sea Journey.’ With terrorism continuing to rule the headlines, we are still in the middle of that dark passage. On top of these terrifying world events, people are still having to cope with challenges and losses in their personal lives. But music can help tell a story of overcoming. I hope that the material I’ve written and arranged for Ocean will provide an uplifting soundtrack for traveling hopefully on these changing seas.”

Before it was even released, the rough mixes from Ocean had already garnered Cutting a string of awards and accolades, including a Media Arts Fellowship from her county of residence, a Governer’s Arts Award in Composition from the state of Maryland, a Contemporary Folk Instrumentalist of the Year WAMMIE at the Washington Area Music Awards, and a rare 800-word spread in Billboard magazine for the release of “Forgiveness,” a single from the album. She has already been offered distribution for the album in Canada, the U.K. and Japan. Having achieved national-level success as mastermind of The New St. George’s High Tea, Cutting now stands poised to gain an audience for Ocean that stretches far beyond U.S. shores. [www.jennifercutting.com]

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