In my previous post, I suspected that this kind of announcement would be forthcoming, unfortunately I'm a few days late posting about it. Anyway, five bands are scheduled to open for Ne Obliviscaris on two of their upcoming Australian tour dates.
On March 27th at The Castle, Empyrean, Death Audio and Among the Devoured are on the bill, and the next day at the East Brunswick Club, Empyrean, In Malice's Wake and A Million Dead Birds Laughing will open.
Both flyers are available at MetalObsession.net.
March 9, 2009
Ne Obliviscaris Tour Support
March 1, 2009
Ne Obliviscaris Tour, Full Length Album to Follow
According to Ne Obliviscaris' MySpace blog, they'll tour Australia from March 27 to May 23 before heading into the studio to record their first full-length album! As a US resident, it's that second part that I really care about. I previously wrote that The Aurora Veil is amazing, and I'm very much looking forward to hearing more of their music.
Financial support for this tour comes from Welkin Entertainment and MetalObsession.net, but as for musical support, nowhere does it say anything about other bands on this tour. I can't imagine that Ne Obliviscaris would tour alone, so keep watch for another announcement.
Dates:
Fri, March 27 at The Castle, Dandenong, VIC *all ages*
Sat, March 28 at The East Brunswick Club, Melbourne, VIC
Fri, April 3 at Monstrothic (Rosies Live), Brisbane, QLD
Sat, April 4 at Brannigan’s Tavern, Gold Coast, QLD
Fri, April 24 at Enigma Bar, Adelaide, SA
Sat, May 2 (Day) at The Brisbane Hotel, Hobart, TAS *all ages*
Sat, May 2 (Evening) at The Brisbane Hotel, Hobart, TAS *18+ *
Fri, May 15 at The Basement, Canberra, ACT
Sat, May 16 at The Annandale Hotel, Sydney, NSW
Fri, May 22 at The Barwon Club, Geelong, VIC
Sat, May 23 at The Espy Gershwin Room, Melbourne, VIC
Fri, March 27 at The Castle, Dandenong, VIC *all ages*
Sat, March 28 at The East Brunswick Club, Melbourne, VIC
Fri, April 3 at Monstrothic (Rosies Live), Brisbane, QLD
Sat, April 4 at Brannigan’s Tavern, Gold Coast, QLD
Fri, April 24 at Enigma Bar, Adelaide, SA
Sat, May 2 (Day) at The Brisbane Hotel, Hobart, TAS *all ages*
Sat, May 2 (Evening) at The Brisbane Hotel, Hobart, TAS *18+ *
Fri, May 15 at The Basement, Canberra, ACT
Sat, May 16 at The Annandale Hotel, Sydney, NSW
Fri, May 22 at The Barwon Club, Geelong, VIC
Sat, May 23 at The Espy Gershwin Room, Melbourne, VIC
February 7, 2009
The Myth About Electric Violins and Guitar Amps
It’s commonly believed in the electric string world that electric violinists should avoid using guitar amps. Apparently, the same trait that makes guitar solos sound “flashy” makes electric violins sound shrill and screechy. Well, not necessarily.
To demonstrate what I mean, I give you this video of electronica/progressive rock violinist James Sudakow playing with his band through a Marshall guitar amp. This song is called "Orange" from his album Green.
Goddamn right! I love this song and his sound.
Does he sound shrill and screechy through that amp? Not at all. In fact, his C string tone has some serious balls. Remember, guitar amps are the amps with the great tubes, and as guitarists have found, tubes are synonymous with good tone. So take advantage! If a problem with screeching does arise, well, that's why there's an equalizer on the amp.
Take note of what Sudakow is using in this video: a Zeta Strados 5-String Violin with the Strados Series Pickup and, according to his MySpace page, a Marshall JCM2000 TSL half stack. For a better look, his promo pictures give great close-ups of his gear. Unfortunately, his effects pedals aren't visible anywhere; I'd love to know what they are.
The Strados Pickup is worth mentioning because it's an active pickup (in contrast to a passive pickup) and can deliver a fat, low-impedance, noise-free signal to his effects and amp, which is always a plus. There's nothing wrong with passive pickups per se, but their signals are susceptible to RFI and sound a little weaker to me than active pickups' signals. If you have any thoughts about the two, feel free to leave a comment.
My point is: don't follow what people say, follow your ears. Electric string players have many, many options of pickups, instruments, bows, cables, amps, pedals, etc. available to use and it's up to them/us to put everything together and make a sound that evokes that devil inside (or some other feeling of satisfaction). Go play and listen to as much music as possible to teach your ears how active pickups sound versus passive ones, solid state amps versus tube amps, Yamaha Electric Instruments versus Mark Wood's instruments, etc, etc, etc. Only after discovering the possibilities and learning some basics about electronics can one truly "go out and get" the sound that's in one's head.
One last thing, I recommend that you check out James Sudakow post haste. He's great.
February 6, 2009
Metal Bands with Strings Part 2
Since my Metal Bands with Strings post last November, I’ve found a few more string players in bands who write some really shit-kickin' music:
Earl Maneein
NYC violinist/violist, graduate of the Mannes College of Music and founder/primary songwriter for the self-described “violin-driven post-thrash metal band” Resolution15. Maneein’s deeply distorted and down-tuned 7-string violin handles the rhythm and lead duties with delectable brutality, leaving no room for a guitarist in the band.
Resolution15’s message is a political one and so is their name: they write on their MySpace page that Resolution 15 was “…passed by the North Vietnamese in 1959 to aid the Viet-Cong insurgency, leading directly to U.S. involvement in the second Indo-Chinese War.” Their music takes swipes at injustices in Southeast Asia as well as former president George W. Bush. To understand a little better, I think it’s worth reading a very interesting MySpace blog post written by Maneein, whose family comes from Thailand, about the cost of affluence manifesting itself at the Burmese-Thai border.
Hear it for yourself: their album is available for listening at their website. I recommend starting with "Blowback."
Tim Charles is a man of many talents. He is a composer, businessman and instrumentalist at home with classical music, jazz and even metal. He is in the Australian progressive metal band Ne Obliviscaris as the violinist (acoustic no less!), clean vocalist, booking agent and co-manager (extreme vocalist Xenoyr is the other co-manager). He handles the business side of things through the company that he founded with Xenoyr, Welkin Entertainment, where he also manages and promotes other bands. That’s pretty impressive, but even more so is Ne Obliviscaris’ demo, The Aurora Veil.
If I had to pick one word to describe this album, it would be “epic.” I usually don’t try to categorize music like this since I prefer to let it speak for itself, but the songs on The Aurora Veil are simply that: epic. Two of the three songs are almost 12 minutes long while the third is nine and a half, and each one is a trek through Opeth-esque texture and mood shifts. However, Ne Obliviscaris’ extremes go further than Opeth’s with less repetition. The death and black metal sections don’t fail to pummel while the soft sections are moments of exquisite beauty. When they put the two on top of each other, the result is very dense sound that remains clear and tasteful without suffering from pretension.Each player’s top-notch technique allows the music to become quite complex, but they always manage to find their own voice within even the most intricate parts of a song. Charles can be found either in the rhythm section, trading leads with the guitars or on top of it all with a melody. Brendan Brown, the bassist, has serious chops which he uses to shred through his unique lines or to double the fast-as-hell guitar parts. Dan Presland is the winner of the 2006 "Fastest Feet" drummer competition in Australia; I shouldn’t need to say any more about the double bass pedaling than that.
The Aurora Veil is available for purchase on the Ne Obliviscaris MySpace page. It’s only 10 Australian dollars plus shipping (AU$5 to send it to me in Boston), which is a deal considering the quality of music that’s on it.
Photo courtesy of flickr.com/toycarphotos
January 26, 2009
Theremin Cellos Part 2
I just found another article about Leon Theremin's cello from Modern Mechanix, posted just over a week ago. It was originally published in May 1932, one month before the article in my first Theremin Cello post.
The transcription from Modern Mechanix:
Tones of New Stringless Cello Generated by Electricity
AN ELECTRIC cello without strings capable of producing tremendous volume and exquisite tone has been invented by Leon Theremin, who is shown in the photo on the left demonstrating how his new instrument is played.
Tones are varied by running the fingers of the left hand up and down the heavy black line which replaces the strings, while the right hand works the pump to control the volume.
An external oscillator, amplifier and loud speaker are used with this cello and the tones are generated by the oscillating tubes in the instrument. As the fingers are run up and down the black line, under which a coil is concealed, the player varies the capacity of the circuit which alters the frequency, or pitch, of the oscillating tubes.
There's even a short demo of its sound on YouTube:
As suggested by sidecars, the guy in the video above, search Google for "theremin cello pringle" for more information. Judging by the search results, it's "pringle" as in "Peter Pringle," the thereminist.
January 23, 2009
Theremin Cellos
I found this clipping on Modern Mechanix, a blog that posts articles from old electronics and science magazines. This one came from the June, 1932 issue of Modern Mechanix Magazine.
Someone at Modern Mechanix transcribed the text, and it reads:
Theremin Cellos Win Music Public in “Electric Concert”Pretty awesome, right? These completely predate even the earliest electric cellos that I've heard about, which were made in the early 1980's (Ernest Nussbaum's Travielo comes to mind). The only catch is that they're really Theremins and not really cellos. I suppose that if nothing else, Leon Theremin had the idea for an electric cello first.
THE electric cello, developed recently by Leon Theremin, has now been accepted by the music public as an instrument of high artistic merit.
At a symphony concert of electric music given a short while ago at Carnegie Hall, New York City, the electric cello made a sensational debut in a program consisting of selections from the old music masters– Bach, Haydn, Debussy, and others.
Producing exquisite tones, with both extremes of volume, the electric cellos have as their innards vacuum tubes whose oscillations are controlled by levers and coils on the instrument.
December 9, 2008
Rachel Barton Pine: Classical Violinist, Metalhead
The December 2008 issue of Strings magazine features virtuoso violinist Rachel Barton Pine on its cover. For some reason, it reminded me of the first album of hers that I ever heard: Stringendo: Storming the Citadel. Do you know that one? It’s her metal album.
It was released in 1997, the year after Apocalyptica’s debut album, Plays Metallica by Four Cellos. However, Barton’s recording includes more than just Metallica covers (not at all to say that an album of Metallica covers is bad!). Her range of selections is large, covering classic rock, thrash metal, speed metal, grunge and pop. She even includes two classical pieces just to drive home her point that metal and classical music are not as different as people (from both genres) think. The tracklisting is below:
- The Star Spangled Banner (Hendrix)
- Thunderstruck / Back In Black (AC/DC)
- Sunday Bloody Sunday (U2)
- Cowboys from Hell (Pantera)
- Blow Up the Outside World (Soundgarden)
- Paranoid (Black Sabbath)
- Fade To Black (Metallica)
- Caprice No. 24 in A minor (Paganini)
- Heartbreaker / Black Dog / Stairway To Heaven (Led Zeppelin)
- Symphony of Destruction (Megadeth)
- All Apologies / Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana)
- Passacaglia for violin and cello (Handel, arr. Halvorsen)
- The Spirit of Radio (Rush)
- One (Metallica)
Also worth noting is Pine’s 1998 album, Instrument of the Devil, which follows the path of comparing metal to classical that Stringendo blazed. However, Instrument is an all-classical album focused on destroying the stereotype that the violin plays only pretty and sweet music. This is an album of the music that associates the violin with evil, much like the Satanic reputation that the electric guitar has gained from blues, rock and heavy metal.
I’ll admit that I have not been following her since these two albums came out, so I’m very impressed to find that in addition to her busy concert schedule, she’s maintaining a large and professionally-done web presence. Kudos to her! She has embraced the “Web 2.0” culture and adapted to the new model of music business.
Her homepage is divided into three parts, one for her classical fans, one for rock music (with a motive for turning life-long metalheads on to classical music, of course) and a third part for music business. She is currently making two podcasts, one for classical music and the other for metal, has a blog, a myspace, twitter, flickr, facebook and a YouTube page. Talk about keeping in touch!
More importantly, she understands that music is about taking little parts and building big things with them. Not just making notes and motives into phrases, phrases into sections and sections into pieces of music, but putting music into a social context. It’s as though she asked herself “what’s bigger than ‘art for art’s sake’?” and thus started her musical ambassadorship between genres and the Rachel Elizabeth Barton Foundation for classical musicians in need.
She doesn’t need me to talk about how accomplished her career is, so I won't. However, I do want to draw people’s attention to the fact that she is a socially-aware artist who’s not afraid to break down preconceptions about seemingly disparate styles of music, thus hooking people on music they might not have otherwise heard. That she can throw down a bitchin’ solo on top of it all doesn’t hurt either.
;)
(Photo courtesy of flickr.com/photos/rachelbartonpine)
