Walter Daniel – VoyagerFest

Jibber and Twitch at the Carousel Lounge

Walter Daniel — Wed, 21 Dec 2016 21:49:02 +0000

People who have lived in Austin for a while complain that the city has become too mainstream, too corporate, too bland. In other words, it’s just not _weird_ any more. To counter that perception I present to you local band Jibber & Twitch.

First, a bit of history. Around 1980 an English band renamed themselves the Cardiacs and recorded several albums that combined the polyrhythmic complexity of Gentle Giant with the intensity of punk rock. As Wikipedia puts it, they were known “…for their eccentric, theatrical stage shows.” Check YouTube for some live video. Leader Tim Smith has had health issues in recent years so the Cardiacs have not been active. The music is difficult to find in the US with no real digital distribution and about the only physical sales through Wayside Music.

Fast forward to Austin in 2016 and Jibber & Twitch (J&T) leaps into action as a Cardiacs tribute band. The guitarist of J&T, Mohadev, is the leader of Voyager 2016 artists Stop Motion Orchestra; he also played with Obnosticon at the event. Stop Motion Orchestra can be quirky; J&T is weird…in a good way.

J&T is a five piece group with drums, bass, keyboards, guitar, and lead vocals. The band played a set of Cardiacs songs at the Carousel Lounge in Central Austin during mid-December, just not your typical holiday fare. There was the start-and-stop playing reminiscent of Gentle Giant along with sometimes shouted punk vocals backed up by a solid rhythm section, intricate keyboards, and active guitar. J&T played about 50 minutes of Cardiacs material with plenty of energy to an enthusiastic audience.

Your assignment over the holiday break is this: learn about the Cardiacs, keep an eye out for Jibber & Twitch, and Keep Austin Weird.

Touch Guitars at Voyager Music Festival 2016

Walter Daniel — Sun, 11 Sep 2016 19:01:46 +0000

The 2016 Voyager Music Festival will include an array of musicians playing unusual stringed instruments that are generally known as “touch guitars.” A musician plays one of these devices by tapping and holding strings against the fretboard most of the time. Electric guitarists often use tapping as an effect; in fact, jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan plays with two-handed tapping exclusively. However, touch guitars are quite different from standard electric guitars and therefore played quite differently. The best known tapping instrument is the Chapman Stick that was used widely by Tony Levin with Peter Gabriel and with King Crimson in the 1980s and 90s.

Thirteen of Everything and the Chapman Stick
Saturday at 7:50 PM on the Ballroom Stage

Thirteen of Everything’s Mick Peters

The Stick dates back to an experiment that Emmett Chapman, a California guitarist, tried back in 1969. Most versions of the instrument include bass and guitar strings so it is possible for one player to cover two or even three parts.

Local melodic progressive rock band Thirteen of Everything includes Mick Peters on Stick, bass guitar, and acoustic guitar. While he mostly plays a standard 10-string Chapman Stick (5 bass strings, 5 treble strings), Mick sometimes uses an 8-string Stick Bass model.

Herd of Instinct and the Warr Guitar
Saturday at 6:30 PM on the Ballroom Stage

Mark Cook of Herd of Instinct (photo credit: Angel Stephens)

Another touch instrument that has been around a while is the Warr Guitar. The Warr dates back to the early 1990s and the best known player is Trey Gunn from King Crimson in the 1990s and 2000s. The design is more guitar-like in that strumming is possible plus most players hold the instrument horizontally.

New to Voyager this year is Herd of Instinct from the Dallas-Fort Worth area. This band includes both Rick Read on Chapman Stick and Mark Cook on Warr Guitar. In fact, Mark uses a 14-string model! Herd of Instinct played a show in Austin a few weeks before the festival and the combination of Warr and Stick was amazing. Mark and Rick freely traded between covering the bass parts, tapping chords, and playing leads.

Cédric Theys of DiM13NSiON

DiM13NSiON and the Touch Guitar
Sunday at 6:30 PM on the Chapel Stage

At Voyager, Austin locals DiM13NSiON will perform introspective and improvised music. In this duo, Cédric Theys plays a U8 Touch Guitar using both tapping and strumming techniques. Their work has a film soundtrack feeling, with Thomas McGregor adding an organic touch with his violin.

Learn more about Touch Guitar
Saturday 1:10 PM on the Ballroom Stage

New at Voyager in 2016 are workshops. There will be so many unique stringed instruments at the festival that it’s only logical that one of the workshops is for touch guitars. On Saturday afternoon at 1:10 PM (get there early folks!) Cédric Theys of DiM13NSiON will lead a discussion of and play examples using Chapman Stick, Warr Guitar, and the U8 Deluxe Touch Guitar.

Touch Guitar through the Years and the Austin Connection

Markus Reuter, a German musician who studied with Robert Fripp in Guitar Craft, became known for his Chapman Stick and Warr Guitar playing. He preferred to play a continuous instrument, not one with separate bass and guitar string groupings. He designed a new instrument with Ed Reynolds (here in Austin!) and set up Touch Guitars to produce 8- and 10-string models. Markus is the best known player of his instruments including tours with the Stick Men trio that includes Tony Levin on Chapman Stick:

Markus Reuter also performs ambient soundscapes:

This Trey Gunn Band performance of “Kuma” has some great video of his Warr Guitar playing:

In recent years the most visible Stick player has been Nick Beggs with Steven Wilson (watch this video of “Home Invasion” starting about 3:15:

Amanda LePre’s “Beneath the Forest of Error”

Walter Daniel — Sun, 10 Jul 2016 18:56:10 +0000

You may have seen Descendants of Erdrick (progressive metal arrangements of classic video game soundtracks) at VoyagerFest 2015 with guitarist and occasional vocalist Amanda Lepre fronting. She has a solo album of quite different music and has been playing shows of the material this summer.

Beneath the Forest of Error is driven by energetic acoustic guitar riffs backed by drums, bass, keyboards, and electric guitar. The intensity of some acoustic guitar parts reminds me of Steve Morse–check out the beginning of the song “The Gift.” Lead vocals are passionate and vocal harmonies abound. A few songs edge into metal territory but at its heart the album is acoustic guitar and vocals.

There are some progressive elements to the music. For example, there are a few places where a bridge or chorus shifts into an odd time signature such as 13/8, 7/4, or 5/4. A few songs have many creative vocal overdubs that give a Kate Bush vibe. Check out the vocal layers in the middle portion of the song “Forest of Error” for instance. The VoyagerFest shirt from last year had the phrase “explore something outside the mainstream” and this album certainly meets that standard!

Descendants of Erdrick recently completed a short tour in which they worked in a couple of solo sets with band (see this Twitter video. Here in Austin, Amanda Lepre will play an early show at The Sidewinder on Saturday, July 16, at 7 PM with Bitforce opening at 6 PM. There won’t be vocal overdubs or electric guitar but then I enjoy hearing songs that are arranged and performed differently than the studio originals.

An Unexpected Portal to Prog: The Austin Public Library

Walter Daniel — Tue, 05 Jul 2016 23:44:44 +0000

Did you know that Austin Public Library (APL) has all kinds of resources for progressive music and beyond? Physical items such as books and CDs remain available but APL is increasingly using electronic borrowing services. A library card is free if you live in the city limits, just apply at a nearby branch using your ID and proof of residency such as a utility bill. Note that you can place a hold on a physical item at another location and it will be delivered to the branch of your choosing.

CDs: APL has a remarkable collection of music CDs scattered across its many branches. For example, if you search for Steven Wilson you will find solo albums such as his recent Hand. Cannot. Erase. plus In Absentia by Porcupine Tree along with some of the remixes that Wilson has done for Jethro Tull, ELP, and so forth. You’ll find plenty of CDs like classic Pink Floyd and newer Dream Theater. Jazzrock fusion is not as well represented as progressive rock but there are Mahvishnu Orchestra and Jeff Beck titles.

Books: Sure, any library has books, but this library has two books with the words “progressive rock” in subtitles! As you might expect in music-heavy Austin there are many instructional books in the collection for guitar, synthesizers, drums, and more. Most sheet music titles are located in the downtown Central Library with coverage from Pink Floyd to jazz fakebooks. I haven’t found many biographies of interest other than well known artists such as David Bowie and Pink Floyd.

DVDs: While major films find their way to streaming services such as Netflix I find that concert videos and music documentaries get little coverage in that world. Fortunately, APL still acquires physical DVDs. The movie about every progrocker’s favorite tape-based keyboard is available: Mellodrama, the Mellotron Movie. There are a couple of Rush concert DVDs (Clockwork Angels and Snakes & Arrows) but you’ll also find Moogfest 2006 featuring Jordan Rudess, Jan Hammer, and Keith Emerson.

Online: Like libraries in other large cities, APL has been expanding online “borrowing” of materials using a growing number of services. One such service is named Overdrive and focuses on ebooks that can be temporarily downloaded to Kindles, Android devices, or iOS devices. More recently the library added a service named Hoopla Digital and it is a winner.

Hoopla Digital: Hoopla seems to be focused on movies, TV episodes, and music but the service does have ebooks such as Mountains Come out of the Skythe Illustrated History of Progressive Rock. One of the movies is I Dream of Wires, a documentary about modular synthesizers. Where Hoopla really shines is in the breadth of music. Much of the Kscope label catalog is available such as Steven Wilson, Porcupine Tree, The Pineapple Thief, Nosound, Blackfield, and many more. Independents such as Austin’s own Descendants of Erdrick are represented by their Advent album. The local Modern Outsider label is on the service such as shoegaze trio Moving Panoramas and postrockers The Calm Blue Sea. Progressive rock, prog metal, and fusion artists with multiple albums on Hoopla include Brand X, Dream Theater, The Dixie Dregs, Camel, Steve Hackett, Ultravox, Soft Machine, Fates Warning, Brian Eno, Be Bop Deluxe, Bill Nelson, Kate Bush, Jethro Tull, Marillion, Mike Oldfield, Yes, Ozric Tentacles, Gong, and Mick Karn.

The APL site includes a How do I get started with Hoopla page. Once you have a library card you set up an account with Hoopla, link your card, then download an app to your device (or just use the service in a computer Web browser). Some albums can be downloaded to a device for a week, other albums must be streamed. The problem is that you are limited to six items per month! Fortunately, a multi-CD title counts as just one item.

Thirteen of Everything at the Carousel Lounge

Walter Daniel — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 02:19:06 +0000

Longtime local band Thirteen of Everything played two sets at the circus-themed Carousel Lounge on June 16. The quartet includes drums, Chapman Stick (also bass, acoustic guitar, and bass pedals), guitar, and keyboards. While the band has kept a low profile in recent years they are playing shows in 2016.

Their first song, “Flying East,” was largely in 7/4 time so I knew that I was in the right place. The music can be described as melodic progressive rock with some edge. They performed a new song that has yet to be recorded, ToE launched into “Red” by King Crimson (also covered by Proud Peasant at VoyagerFest 2015). After a short break, guitarist Joe Funk played some solo acoustic then was joined by keyboardist Thad Miller. After a couple more album songs the band played another cover, this time “Lazarus” by Porcupine Tree. The sets were a nice mixture of familiar and new, originals and covers, vocals and instrumentals.

The day after the show I pulled the band’s 2005 CD “Welcome Humans” from the shelf for a listen. The release was on the Musea label (yes, the one in France) and contains about 72 minutes of music, about the limit of the compact disc format. The first half of the album has echoes of Camel with some King Crimson grit. The second half, especially the 26-minute suite “Late for Dinner,” gets into Gabriel-era Genesis territory with dynamics, acoustic guitar, organ, dramatic vocals, and so forth. Joe sometimes uses a Steve Hackett-like electric guitar sound but his phrasing is different resulting in a unique take on the instrument.Thirteen of Everything plays on Friday, July 22 at the Lucky Lounge in downtown Austin. They share the bill with The Aaron Clift Experiment, Seven Circles, and VoyagerFest 2015 alums Black Ladder

Circling Drones at the Sahara Lounge – Review by Walter Daniel

Walter Daniel — Fri, 10 Jun 2016 22:21:59 +0000

2015 Voyager Festival alums Circling Drones played a set at the relaxed and funky Sahara Lounge in East Austin on June 3. The venue is away from the downtown traffic and has plenty of free parking.

At the 2015 outdoor festival Circling Drones performed as a quartet (drums, bass, guitar, sax) that had a laid back, Canterbury vibe much like Soft Machine. For the Sahara show the group included a keyboardist who injected a different energy into the lineup–a good reference might be The Dixie Dregs. There were a couple of nice organ solos in the vein of John Novello (Niacin) as well as an extended electric piano solo that was reminiscent of the kind of playing that Adam Holzman has displayed on Steven Wilson’s recent solo tours.

Melodies on some of the songs were doubled by guitar and sax for a sound that echoed the Jeff Beck (guitar)/Jan Hammer (Minimoog) collaborations from the late 1970s. The set included some burning guitar solos as well as tasteful tenor sax from Matt Moore.

Circling Drones will play an album release show at the Mohawk on Friday, June 17, at 7 PM. Note that this show is one of the many pre-event parties for the Solstice Festival at Pan Am Park on June 18.