Presenting creative music in Seattle since 2013
Posts about event artists
Badwater Fire Company redefines what can be done with the classic guitar trio format. Their complex music brings to mind the elaborate constructions of The Mars Volta, though with a directness that would be lost in a band with a higher population.
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Links were good as of when the artist performed. Some may no longer work.
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Autumn Electric is a Seattle-based psychedelic folk-rock band with a tendency to produce epic rambling tracks full of differing sections and unexpected turns. Songwriter Michael Trew has been gathering like-minded musicians since the band’s debut release in 2010. Their most recent collection, Flowers for Ambrosia, catapults them into the realm of progressive rock, and features the addition of multi-instrumentalist Johnny Unicorn as a full-time member.
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Links were good as of when the artist performed. Some may no longer work.
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Although Zhongyu, the band, is relatively new to the world, its seeds stretch back several decades. It started as a recording project for the compositions of Jon Davis, which defy categorization by combining qualities of progressive rock, jazz, space rock, chamber music, and Asian traditional music. These compositions are the result of years of listening to challenging music, and strive to present balance: between complexity and simplicity, noise and silence, beauty and terror, energy and calm.
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Links were good as of when the artist performed. Some may no longer work.
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Trimtab formed in 2001 in Minneapolis, MN under the concept of Jason Goessl, who, inspired by the work and philosophy of R. Buckminster Fuller, realized a link between Fuller’s architecture and musical form and meter. The original band was comprised of Jim Anton on bass, Tim Glenn on drums, and Goessl on guitar. Their first full length album The Car, the House, and the Map was released in 2008 (Conduit Records).
With Goessl’s move west to Seattle, WA, the second and current incarnation of Trimtab features Phil Cali on bass and Brian Oppel on drums. Trimtab’s latest compilation New Model is slated for release later in 2013 (Parlour Trick).
The music of Trimtab is difficult to sum up in a simple phrase or genre. The band’s compositions are sonic portmanteaus that meld philosophical and architectural concepts with classical, jazz, Eastern Indian, African, and rock music styles. The unpredictability and complexity of their compositions is magnetic, generating a seemingly new listening experience with each performance. Varied meters create hypnotic tensions. Abrasive chordal and percussive expression mixed with gentler melodies and intense dynamic changes creates a unique gravitational pull. Whether listening to the arc of a Trimtab album or just a single composition, a development from compression, to tension, to visual, to abstract, to the electrical is evidenced.
Goessl, Cali, and Oppel sustain a synergy that reveals an exhibition of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic transformation. Refreshingly, the unexpected is the only thing the listener can expect from Trimtab.
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Links were good as of when the artist performed. Some may no longer work.
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Tone Dogs began in 1987 as a studio experiment between musical alchemists Fred Chalenor and Amy Denio, under the creative technological guidance of audio engineer Drew Canulette at Dog Fish Studio up in the hills above Newburg, OR. Fresh pie was served, Fred and Amy played their basses and guitars and drums and whatnot, and luminary guests (Frith/Reichel/von Drehle/Bain) were invited to contribute. They recorded Ankety Low Day (orig. C/Z Records, Matt Cameron on drums) and Early Middle Years (orig. Soleilmoon, Will Dowd on drums), and toured the US and Europe through 1991. Now Fred and Amy are back, playing some golden oldies and venturing as always into uncharted territory, on basses, guitars and other whatnots.
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Links were good as of when the artist performed. Some may no longer work.
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