| CD REVIEW TSM/SLW Promotions special June 2010, #3 : Lynch - VK Lynne - Mojo Pojo - Snew - The Dreaming Tree |
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TSM/SLW Promotions special June 2010, #3 Well, I’m hoping this special can still be posted this month. The editor-in-chief being somewhat occupied with the start-up of the festival season here in Belgium, the posibility exists that this won’t be posted before the month’s over. Well, we’ll see. This time around we got a fairly diverse batch, including Chicago’s Lynch, (Pennsylvania born) VK Lynne from California, Mojo Pojo from Caracas in Venezuela, Los Angeles based Snew, and eventually UK’s The Dreaming Tree from Worchester. Some not too nice stuff, some better stuff, some delightful stuff…yours to discover and decide over for yourselves! Band : Lynch Based in the Chicago area, this Melodic Hard Rock act was originally active during the ‘80s, having been founded in 1981 by singer Danny Lynch, guitarist Mike Burke, bassist Ken Olsofka, and drummer Frank Pace. Influenced by the likes of Thin Lizzy, Led Zeppelin, Y & T, Bad Company, Deep Purple…or to put it differently, the greatest of the genre of the early and late ‘70s…the foursome started playing their own songs in the club circuit in and around Chicago, but apparently never put out an album. During the ‘90s the members went about doin’ their own things (getting jobs, raising families) and generally taking a break from music as a whole. But then in 2007 Pace and Olsofka reconnected, and this eventually led to the resurrection of the band in its original line-up. At their own pace (not playing any shows yet) the band went on to create 7 new tracks, which they eventually recorded at Fat Recording Studio (an annalog only studio) with studio owner Dave Martorana and had mastered for CD at Gravity Studios by one Doug McBride (check stuff by the likes of Buddy Guy, Rise Against, Hawthorn Heights, Fall Out Boy, and more). Waiting for the CD to come off the presses, the band returned to the live front in October 2009, according to our info, to the great delight of music fans in the band’s area of influence. If you’ll believe the band’s own promo talk, Window To Your Soul (title taken from a line in the song “Wash Me”) “…was released to great critical acclaim…,” and “…has found worldwide success and is being played on radio stations around the globe…”. Quite frankly, I wonder what others have heard in this band’s music, which I simply can not! Rationalizing things, the music is a blend of Melodic Hard Rock with occasional fringes of dirty Blues, heavy Rhythm & Blues, Reggae, and even some Celtic touches here and there. Sounds good, and I’m sure the band will fill many a small bar with slightly enthoused people every time they get to play, but in all honesty there’s quite some repetition in the songs’ build-up. Essentially, you’ll find Burke playing one riff per song again and again, adding some (lead) fringes here and there. But the most disappointing thing in Lynch’s music, for me personally, is the singer’s almost constant slightly whining high pitch, which sshows little to none variety! Of course, you’re free to feel this band is the world’s top, and at any rate you should make up your own minds, but to me it’s no surprize (crisis or not) that there’s no label out there picking up this band as of yet! The band’s been so kind as to post each of the 7 songs at myspace.com/lynchrocks1724. If you find that, contrary to me, you like, feel free to check out the band’s own website (www.) lynch-rocks.com, where you’ll find 3 other tracks posted, as well as a video. Oh…latest news: in February 2010 Olsofka left the band; he has since been replaced by Deb Altman, apparently a born drummer whom also plays violin (which she has used in her own music frrom time to time), and of course the bass! 70/100 -------------------------------------------- Now residing in California, singer/ songwriter VK Lynne was originally a native of Dutch country Pennsylvania (she’s not Amish though, calling “…the white trash folks who live around them in trailers and such…” her people – spicy detail: when VK was a 7th grade at Daniel Boone High School, Richie Kotzen was a senior, but the two never even met in those days). Before finishing college, that’s where she learned enough about singing the Blues before even owning a guitar. She then moved to Philadelphia, where she eventually recorded her debut album The Key Of V (released in September 2001, according to Amazon.com) with a bunch of studio musicians. But VK somehow didn’t agree with Philadelphia, or perhaps Philadelphia didn’t agree with her…so she eventually packed up her things and left for Los Angeles, where she began singing lead vocals with Hollywood Jam-Staple act Monogroove (have, as far as I know, self-released 4 albums to date). It’s here where she was taught the scene, the clubs, the promotors, and how to make it on a stage the hard way. Eventually finding her footing, she left the band in order to form her own band and start writing songs for a new solo album. I’ve no exact idea of when the album Black Halo (the title of the album again has a nice story behind it which you can find in the biography at (www.) vklynne.com) eventually surfaced. Amazon.com mentions January 2009 as a release date, but somehow that doesn’t correlate with the biographical info that VK and her backing band hit the Hollywood club circuit during the early 2000’s, making notable appearances at higher level clubs such as The Key Club, Genghis Cohen,and The House Of Blues (where they opened for Cross Canadian Ragweed). Fans were coming from about everywhere, thanks to word of mouth, Internet radio, and MySpace. One of those somewheres was Scandinavia, from whence Danish producer James Thomas (had worked with the likes of Cher and Beth Hart) took contact with VK in 2008. as it so happened, VK already had quite a few new song ideas in her mind and was ready to take ‘em to a studio to record ‘em. The two talked over the project, the new direction VK wanted to take with the new music, the fact she had a growing fanbase in Scandinavia…and eventually she decided it was time to take a new approach with a new face. So, she upped and left for Denmark, where she and Thomas worked on her material and recorded it. Lyrically, the album’s songs deal with the things in life VK has gone through in the past couple of years, stuff like her own struggle with anorexia, Hollywood, religious hypocrisy, and of course love relations (those fictional, because she has a faithful partner in Sean). Stylistically, the music is definitely Blues based (which suits VK’s voice wonderfully), but grounded in Rock, with the occasional Pop Rock coming though in the calmest songs (check the album’s title track, and the alternate X-Mas song “Salvation In The Skies”). In the “heavier” songs (he said, jokingly…because we ain’t exactly talking Heavy Metal here, but rather Poppy Hard Rock) you get occasional touches of Alternative (and electric) Country, wacky percussion passages…but hey, you really aught to just check out the couple of songs (6 in total when I last checked) posted at myspace.com/vklynne. Great little singer, this! 92/100 -------------------------------------------- I’m pretty sure this is the first band of Venezuelan origin I’ve ever had the pleasure to come across, and as indicated by the “pleasure” in that first part of the sentence, the acquaintance with this Prog Rock quartet was a positive experience! From Caracas, the band was formed when Enrique Perez Vivas (bass & vocals) started jamming in their “dungeon/ studio/ bar” with brothers Luis Daniel (keyboards) and Jorge “Pepino” Gonzáles (drums), when they were all still in college. All of a similar musical mind (with influences ranging from Morbid Angel to Miles Davis), it was inevitable that the trio would come together to play more and more frequently, and also started to conceive and develop their own material. After a very long search for the correct person to fit the spot, guitarist Antonio “Toallin” Narcisco eventually completed the line-up when he joined the band. Following several shows throughout their country, the boys set about recording the 11 songs for their debut full-length, finding none other than producer Germán Landaeta (check albums by Argentine Heavy Metal act Tempano and Venezuelan Electronic Rock/ Trip Hop act Mochuelo willing to both mix and master the material. But before Mochuelo could get to work, the band had guest contributions from Venezuelan sax player Julio Andrade (plays for Franco Devita, among others) on the album closing “Regreso”, a song done in the boys’ native language (the other Spanish songs being “Llega El Tiempo” and “Esta Vez”), and James Murphy (of Death, Testament, and Obtuary fame) playing a solo on the song “Stained”. By the way, the album is only slightly more vocal (with the English sung “Drifting” and “Green & Blue” completing the list started above) than instrumental (5 tracks versus 6 songs). Which ain’t that important after all, because both are constructed very song-oriented, although even the instrumental parts of of the songs are not neglected. Vivas has a high-pitched singing voice which is not without some warmth, and really the singer’s voice is quite accent-less (in the English songs)! He also gets nice harmonic backings. Not that it matters, because even without vocals the music is very expressive, and, backed by the solid rhythm foundation of both bass and drums, the guitarist and keyboardist maintain a playful alternation of tensions and harmonic collaborations throughout the album. It would be amazing if a South-American band didn’t have sóme Latin influences fused in somewhere, and that’s exactly what you’ll find in the instrumental “Intro”, which includes a bit of play on a mouth harmonica. This is the kind of album any Prog Rock fan will lóve to push the “play” button for over and over again. The album lasting a nice 54 minutes, that is something one doesn’t have to come out of the lazy chair for too often (of course, these days there’s remote controls, but I personally prefer the hands-on kinda stuff). As it so happens, the band posted the first half (or, the first 6 songs) of the album at myspace.com/mojopojoproject, allowing you to get acquainted with their music through 2 instrumentals, 2 Spanish songs, and 2 English songs. Should be exactly what’s needed to induce any serious Prog Rock lover into inquiering about the facilities of getting their own copy of the album! Just to nit-pick for the sake of nit-picking, if the album hadn’t been released in late 2009, I could’ve nominated it into my 2010 year-lists! 98/100 -------------------------------------------- This Hollywood based Hard Rock act started life in November 2005 when singer Curtis Don Vito, (Luxembourg born) guitarist Andy Lux, bassist Mark Ohrenberger and drummer Cat Tate happenstanced upon each other through mutual friends and common ties. The bio also talks of “unseen mystical forces”, but with the two earlier things in play, “fate” seems a bit of a lame excuse, don’t it?. To continue using the biography, “…For a definition of Snew’s sound, how and why they do what they do, let it be said that bands like AC/DC, Motörhead, The Stooges, The Ramones, Alice Cooper, led Zeppelin and Kiss perfected raw electrified monster Rock And Roll, and the members of Snew took notes…”. Well, that may have been some of the guys’ favourite bands, but when push comes to shove it’s the straight-forward Australian tones of AC/DC and Rose Tattoo that come through most prominently, albeit with a welcome touch of Sleeze. The difference being that Don Vito has a slightly more versatile voice than both Brian Johnson and Angry Anderson, singing, screaming, howling, screeching, moaning, shouting and groaning his way through the lyrics. The band at a certain point were attracted the interest of producer Bobby Owsinski (known from having worked with such major players as Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Willie Nelson, Neil Young, The Ramones, Chicago, and many more), whom would produced the band’s 10-track self-released debut album Snew You, which was released in June of 2008. Although the album didn’t get the band the coveted signature at the bottom of a contract with a decent label (or any label at all, for that fact), it díd get named as one of the Top 10 Hard Rock albums of 2008 by SleezeRoxx.com, and is apparently (so the band claims) continuing to get high praise from critics, DJs and fans worldwide. Hum, let’s just put it down to the worldwide economic crisis (in both the music business and the world at large) that this quartet has broken through yet, eh? Still, the guys have had some major eye-catching moments already: In 2009 they teamed up with legendary guitarist Allan Holdsworth and recorded a version of Deep Purple’s “Highway Star” which has seen fans of both Holdsworth and Purple downloading the track in uncountable numbers since April 2009, both through illegal channels as through pay-for-download legal site iTunes. Someone who’s also still got faith in the band’s musical prowess, is Owsinski…seen as he again went to the studio with the lads to record the 10 new tracks noww featured on the band’s 2nd full-length. That the boys have indeed some decent financial backing (or positive receipts from doin’ gigs and the sales of their debut album) is something hinted at by the fact that they were able to hire the Grammy awardwinning Ed Cherney (check Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Iggy Pop, Bob Dylan, AC/DC, Spinal Tap, …) to engineer and mix the material at Los Angeles’ Village Recorder studios (not exactly the cheapest spot in time to hire). Bottom line, if you’re looking for an album by a straight-forward good-time Bluesey Hard Rock that can keep you interested from start to finish, look no further! If you’re tired of waiting around for the more established bands (AC/DC, Rose Tattoo, Airbourne, and more of that ilk) to come around with a new album, look no further for a decent bridge-over act! If…hey, let’s listen to the music first. At myspace.com/snewmusic, you’ll only find the one track “Power Pack” off the new album, but at least it’s full-length. There’s also a couple of videos, including one of this album’s “Feedback And Distortion”. For samples of àll songs on the current album ànd the debut (alongside the band’s cover of “Highway Star”), there’s (www.) snewyou.com (also several videos there). Check it (or not…and be the loser for it), like it (or not…but at least you tried!), and possiby order the album…it’s all up to you now! 90/100 -------------------------------------------- You know, the life of the more open-minded music lover/ journallist is strewn for a large part of albums by bands that are either trying to jump on a successful formula’s bandwagon, or instead trying to do things their own thing. In both cases you’ll find bands that bring off their effort in either abominal way (those are the chanceless from the start), in a way that does not exceed the gross average (more bands chanceless to make it professional, unless some decent label takes a fancy, signs ‘em, & works up their importance in the music business), and those who manage to do exceptional things (regretfully, even in this category you’ll have bands that fail to attract the right attention needed to turn the band from a hobby thing into a fulltime profession). When it comes to quality music, TDT definitely hasn’t chosen the easiest path, but the strongly ‘70s influenced Prog Rock they bring is definitively the kind of stuff that will pass the test of time! In fact, if the band were to quit tomorrow, they can look back on a wonderful achievement with this, their second album! For Wolverhampton (West Midlands, near Birmingham) based TDT, things started for serious in 2003-4 when lead singer Chris Buckler and drummer Neil Ablard met guitarist/ backing singer Dan Jones during a course of sound engineering. It led to Dan’s joining of the guitar-less band that Chris & Neil had been playing in alongside bassist Jim Peterson and keyboardist Steve Barratt. Suddenly, a great number of songs with a wide variety of styles sprouted forth from the band’s rehearsal room, 4 out of the 30 songs of which eventually made it to the band’s first (self-recorded, auto-produced – remember, they were taking sound engineering courses – at Lakeside Studios in Sandwell near Birmingham) self-titled 2004 debut EP. Throughout the rest of the year and that after, the band continued to write songs, trying ‘em out in different settings, even to the point of stripping them down to just acoustic guitar and vocals. This allowed the band to play a nice amount of gigs, and play as many gigs as possible is exactly what the band went for, no matter whether it was an acoustic set or a fully electrical one! Eventually this led to an almost improvisational style in livve conditions, sets frequently including jam sessions that could take any twist and turn (ach man…the true spirit of “progressive music” is in da house!!!). During 2006 the band rebuilt their rehearsal space into their own recording studio, and once work was done, work started on the recording of the band’s full-length debut titled Grafting Lines And Spreading Rumours to document the work of the last two years. The songs went from modern Pop Rock to grandiose, longer Progressive songs, and full-force stompin’ Hard Rock tracks…with plenty of other styles snuck in here and there to leave subtle marks on the end result. The next year was spent promoting the album through live appearances, many of which were again acoustic due to the band’s playing anywhere they could, prompting ‘em to play in venues that necessitated acoustic setups. With the electric songs from the album coming over so well in their acoustic versions came the idea to record songs in their stripped-down versions…the result of which became the album Unplugged One: How To Sound Good Naked, released in December 2008. Living in the UK and playing the Progressively tinted music they play, it would be unevitable for a band the quality of TDT to nót eventually come to the attention of Karl Groom (you know, founding guitarist of British Prog Rock act Threshold, but also a very good producer in his own right, having worked on albums by the likes of DragonForce, John Wetton, Arena, Shadowkeep, Intense, Pendragon, Galahad, and I’m sure I’m forgetting quite a few). The bio doesn’t relate how it came to be, but eventually the band had Groom along in their studio to co-produce the album, and they also spent some time together at Surrey’s Thin Ice Studios (very familiar to Groom, as he’s recorded there with a number of the above mentioned bands) for additional recordings. The end result is an album which is overall based in song-structured Progressive music, but has several different twists. Some songs are a bit more enegyzed, others are calmer…some songs have a powerful Hard Rock drive, others are closer to Pop Rock…but overall it’s safe that the spirit of the late ‘70s roams freely in the 11 tracks of the album (actually there’s 12 listed, but track 1 is really nothing more than 4 seconds of silence – now if it had been called “The Sound Of Silence”, that would’ve been funny, but the thing is that it IS followed by a song titled “Silence Won’t Steal”. Somehow I felt the band had covered a song by American band Chicago, but it turns out “Love And The Heart (Of The City)” is indeed a TDT original. Ach, you know, this album is one of the reasons why I took last week off from reviewing music, using the “necessity” to giving the album additional listening sessions as an “excuse” to justify myself…but really I was indulging myself, being reluctant to having to separate from the wonderful tunes that have meanwhile found a place in my heart and mind. As it so happens, the band posted the complete album at myspace.com/thedreamingtreeuk, except for the album opening track (to get a whiff of thàt, turn off all ambient sounds around you for 4 seconds, hahah), so log on, play the tunes…and fall in love with ‘em! Ach…sometimes it’s good to be a music journalist…because you come across so many nice things without having to look for ‘em yourself! 98/100 -------------------------------------------- Tony. |
