Stratic, Michael Coleman, Aram Shelton, Alex Vittum

"For those who don't know where you're at or aren't sure what this is, I'm Della Reese!" So spoke Sarah Vaughan in the middle of a nice appearance at the Chicago Jazz Festival years ago. I feel a little sassy today so I'll start with something similar. If you don't know that the Gapplegate Guitar Blog often talks about music sans guitar, that's because it ISN'T the Gapplegate Guitar Blog! You have reached the wrong site!

No, seriously, I am a firm believer that musicians who only listen to those who play the instrument they do are doing themselves a great disservice. I played years ago with a great guitarist who admitted to me when hanging out that he had never heard Charlie Parker. I brought out some sides and remedied the situation as best I could in a few hours, but this can be a common thing.

So today we cover a group that has no guitar. They play an electric avant music that any guitarist who cranks can get something out of, and I mean that. The group is Stratic and the album is also Stratic (self-released). Michael Coleman plays keys and makes an electronic stew for everything to float within. Aram Shelton plays saxes and process musical signals live. And Alex Vittum is on drums.

The result is a heady, soulful mix of super electric avant metal jazz rock. It's dense, it's hard, it's got musicality underneath it all and these are some heavy cats who play this along with other things. It's the thinking person's blast of metallic voltage. There are moments when it quiets down and they are just as cool. And so I would very much recommend you give it an earful. Whether you might know what to expect or have no idea, it's some prime electric outness.

Neomythics, New Corporate Resistance

How you will like Neomythics and their album New Corporate Resistance (ExFed) depends on how much you crave new rock that is catchy but committed to telling a story--and has some heft. This band delivers that. Matt Montgomery and Gregory Howe are essentially the driving forces behind this band, which is strong on guitar plying, bass walloping and hard-ish drumming from one Lumpy and also Thomas McCree. Howard Mandel gets some nice guitar action on a few cuts as well.

It's youthful sounding in the vocal department. If you ARE young that wont be something you'll notice, though. If you aren't you'll get a feeling you were here a while ago, because of course the bands WERE young when we were.

So I am posting here because I find these guys interesting. The band has songs, a slight lyricality, solid arrangements and rock rawness in a combination that used to have a presence on top-forty radio. This is probably not going to be top-40 fare because it is lyrically direct. Well and we don't mind that, do we?

Peter Bruntnell, Retrospective

Peter Bruntnell. Peter Bruntnell. How did I miss this guy? Well if you have too, or even if you haven't, you can get a really solid bead on who this man is and what he is about on a Retrospective (Blind Eye 002), culling together some prime cuts from 1995-2011, eight albums, it looks like(?), plus a newly remade version of "Played Out" with Sarah Joyce on vocals.

Alright, then. So we have his strong story-songs, each with vivid moods and what it looks like from Peter Bruntnell's head and heart about what it is to be alive. Neil Young and Jackson Browne come to mind as precursors, though Peter doesn't sound like them. He does have that epic melodic this-is-a-life-story way about his songs. There is some solid guitar wielding, too. This is rock song as art.

So what more to say, except that a few listens got me completely on his wave-length. It's a heavy collection of real, human song making!

Rose & the Nightingale, Spirit of the Garden

When music breaks boundaries, and it's very good, I tend to be especially attentive. Not that I am not paying attention otherwise, but the truly new gets me going and listening in a fully there sense from the first. Rose & the Nightingale and their Spirit of the Garden (Sunnyside) is very much that. The group has an unusual line-up. Jody Redhage plays cello (as, interestingly enough, she also does on the Brian Landrus CD I reviewed today on the Gapplegate Music Blog), sings, and writes the songs. Sara Caswell plays violin and mandolin. Leala Cyr sings and plays trumpet. And Laila Biali sings and plays piano.

So we have four ladies playing an unusual array of instruments, three of them singing beautifully, often in close harmonies. Sara can solo on violin in a very convincing way as well. There is a bit of scatting too.

All told it is the gentle lyricism of the songs, the pastoral mood, the distinctive voices either solo or in harmony and the unusual instrumentation that makes this one so unusual in the best sort of way. It has sophistication but also an unvarnished sort of innocence, even in the face of a rather harsh world out there.

If you feel bruised up in the course of your daily life, put this one on and I think it will help. In is very mellow, yet there is nothing of the smooth slickness that can ruin such an experience. Recommended!

Larkin Poe & Thom Hell, The Sound of the Ocean Sound

Just because I don't usually cover a substyle of music here doesn't mean I shouldn't, if something comes along that's good. Here is that something: Larkin Poe & Thom Hell's The Sound of the Ocean Sound (self-released). It was recorded in Norway and Atlanta, Georgia. Now that may seem unusual but there is a reason. This is a collaborative effort between Larkin Poe (aka the Lovell Sisters) and Thom Hell, a Norwegian rock-pop figure of some repute.

Rebecca and Megan Lovell play acoustic guitars, Megan a hell of a nice dobro, Rebecca also plays mandolin. Rebecca sings lead vocals, as does Thom Hell (and he plays piano and some acoustic guitar throughout). Megan sings harmonies, as do they all as needed. Then there is a solid rhythm section.

It's a lyrical, very nicely done set of songs in a country rock mode. The vocals are really, really nice. And that dobro!

It's just such nice, memorable music. If you like Emmylou Harris or Alison Krauss, there's something here you'll resonate (dobro!) with, I am quite sure. The country Byrds come to mind just a tad too.

So I don't know how far you go in your tastes--in fact this may well match them perfectly. I can go pretty far around the musical planet when something is good. This something is good! It really is!

Stephen Savage, Future Memory

It's easy to pan synth-pop tracks that have no soul. I do it myself. What's hard as with any instrumental combination is to make really good, engrossing, satisfying music, if it's with a bunch of keys and synths or just a cathedral organ. A string quartet. It's what you DO that matters. Stephen Savage does that. Future Memory (self-released) finds him composing music that requires him to man all those electronic instruments plus conventional keys and guitar. Michael O'Connor joins him on drums for part of the time and that works out fine.

What this is I suppose you could say is a cosmically aware space and time form of prog rock. Some sounds a little Zappa-esque, some has a fused provenance, but it's all about the place inside where you conceive of good musical composition ideas and then realize them almost all by yourself in a studio. Now that's easy to poo-poo as not "live" (though of course it's as old as electronic music, and face it--ALL recorded music is "not live") somehow not "organic," and not authentic in some back-to-nature hippie sense that as we now know does not give us nature back any more than nature is something to over-exploit endlessly without courting disaster.

My point is only that the musical result is what we should look to and dismiss only if it is not musically worthwhile. Future Memory is very worthwhile as MUSIC! You aren't going to hear a lot of fleet and intricate soloing because this is prog composition more than axemanship. And I am NOT putting down axemanship either. This isn't going to give it to you is all I am saying.

But the music has depth. Substance. Smarts. Nicely turned lines, harmonic interest, atmosphere and a little drive. Thank you Mr. Savage!

Annette Cantor, Songs to the Goddess

Anyone who reads this blog knows there is much about New Age music I do not like. But every once in a while something comes along that stands up (and out) as musically quite valid and interesting. Such an album is on tap today for your consideration. The artist is singer Annette Cantor and the album is Songs to the Goddess (Source Being).

It's cosmic space, ethnically ambient part-minimal, part-modal music for multiple wordless vocals (Annette) and some nicely turned musical arrangements by C. G. Deuter.

It has all the trappings of New Age music but it stands on its own. Imagine that there was no such thing as New Age and instead this was just an album of cosmic things. In that way it is the equivalent to some of the psychedelic mood records that came out in the late-'60s-early '70s, like Music from the Zodiac, if anybody remembers that.

It has its own musical center from which comes Ms. Cantor's pleasing warbles, dedicated especially to Mother Earth.

Well now you may scoff, but it does work as music, and that's all I care about, really. You decide for yourself.