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BIG BALLOON STORE Big Balloon Music Releases Big Balloon Music "On Demand" CDs - Various CDs and other products World-wide shipping included in all prices Wholesale information - Contact john@bigballoonmusic.com DREADNAUGHT - HIGH HEAT & CHIN MUSIC Format: Double CD Price: $16.00 Track Listing Disc One: Disc Two: "HIGH HEAT & CHIN MUSIC is a double CD filled with absolutely brilliant music. '(She Got The) Bony Cleave' is a romping track that is laugh-out-loud funny... an uncanny knack for writing these incredibly memorable songs and making it seem totally effortless." - PROGRESSIVE EARS / Floyd "From the ultra-funky, Southern-fried, fuzzed-out guitars to the fast-paced syncopated whoop, Dreadnaught is full of musical surprises. The long, drawn-out bass jams, the rolling keyboard ditties and the no-genre-fits-all attitude all make Dreadnaught a musical tour-de-force." - STOWE REPORTER / Mike Schaefer JOHN CURTIS - SHORT SONGS ABOUT AFFORDABLE FOOD Format: CD Price: $12.00 Track Listing This John Curtis release should be dedicated to his own short attention span. With 43 songs in a mere 60 minutes, if you like a song but think it's too short, well… play it again! Many of these compositions were created at the Immersion Composition Societies in Minneapolis (www.bulletlodge.com) and Portland OR (Veronica Lodge) and there are several compositions that pay tribute to different styles (country-rock, 50's rock'n'roll, lounge music, hard rock and my favorite, a prog-rock masterpiece in 5 parts about Top Ramen that clocks in at 1 minute 7 seconds!). Features guest vocals by Steve Hale and guest lyrics by Kai Esbensen from Bubblemath, among others. And yes, there are several short songs about affordable food too. HEADSHEAR - HEADSHEAR Format: CD Price: $13.00 Track Listing Guitarist Deirdre Lynds told me that this music was "harder to play than it sounds!" and I believe that. This Bay Area instrumental band has a fluid and funky style that belies the complex interplay of guitars and bass that make up their unique sound. "Like many modern instrumental prog bands, they use 1980's King Crimson as their departure point. They add influences of classic prog rock and much more. This type of music can become a cold technical exercise of interlocking guitar lines, but Headshear interjects warmth into their music to make it exciting and vibrant, a good balance between challenging and fun. As the band notes, their instrumental music is more akin to classical chamber music than jazz fusion in that it is not based around soloing but rather is carefully constructed. And rather than drawing attention to how difficult it is to play, The music is just fun to listen to. Even if your head does get sheared off." - www.kinesiscd.com MAGUS - LUCID DREAMER Format: CD Price: $13.00 Track Listing "My favourites on this album are the two epic instrumentals Rif and Highway 375 Suite; songs filled with great riffs, fine solos, psychedelic passages and lots of other prog rock elements. The fine re-mastering of these songs allows fans to hear and enjoy these tracks the way they were meant to be heard, with a rich full sound, which was lacking on the original issues of these albums." - Martien Koolen, Dutch Progressive Rock Page THE RED MASQUE - FEATHERS FOR FLESH Format: CD Price: $13.00 Track Listing "What’s incredible about this album is that the group manages to mix all these initially diverging moods and perspectives. They go from VDGG-ish dissonance to seducing harmonies one minute, the next from sound collages to strict polyrhythmic ensemble playing. The tracks are outstretched and compact, with wide spans in stress and moods, always with great attention to detail and finesse - and extremely well produced." - Rikard A Toftesund, Tarkus Magazine "The four piece fronted by vocalist Lynnette Shelley plays a dizzying array of instrumentation, and delivers an intense workout that defies categorization. At any minute they may be driving out a brutal 70's Crimson like rock, a gentle nearly-pastoral pop, offering quirky and angular outbursts of avant-garde strangeness, or hovering in dark, mysterious gothic spaces often all within the confines of the same track..." - Peter Thelen, Expose Magazine DREADNAUGHT - MUSICA EN FLAGRANTE Format: CD Price: $13.00 Track Listing Big Balloon Music in conjunction with Red Fez Records is proud to announce the 4th release by Progabilly masters DREADNAUGHT. This album marks an expansion of the musical pallette for the band - there's still plenty of the prog-tinged rock & roll that has made them such a fun and energetic act, but a wide range of other influences come into play also, from modern classical to funk to you-name-it. It's a great addition to the Dreadnaught legacy! From the Dreadnaught web site: "Dreadnaught is, by all accounts, almost completely insane, and so is its music. It's called progabilly, a genre-forging fusion of old school progressive rock and Americana with a dose of jazz and classical, and has been described as everything from 'Zappa meets Yes at Willie Nelson's BBQ' (Soundcheck) to 'King Crimson at a hoedown' (Spotlight)." The Wire says "MUSICA EN FLAGRANTE is a big shiny science-fiction machine jamming along in its own language, glittering and fanciful and almost cinematic, with a touch of the Dead, kind of like if the Alloy Orchestra soundtrack to Metropolis accidentally got trapped in a telepod with an especially lively rendition of 'Truckin'." Dreadnaught is Tim Haney, Justin Walton and Bob Lord. Additional Song Samples: http://www.redfezrecords.com/default1.htm THE RED MASQUE - BEGGARS AND THIEVES Format: CD Single Price: $2.00 Track Listing A tantilizing preview of the next album from Philadelphia's The Red Masque, featuring the first recorded track from the upcoming album "Feathers for Flesh." As an added bonus, included is a 30 minute tour-de-force version of another song slated for the new album, "Yellow are His Opening Eyes," recorded live at The New Jersey Proghouse. The Red Masque is Kiarash Emami on guitars and keys, Brandon Ross on bass, guitars and keys, Lynnette Shelley on vocals and percussion and Vonorn on drums percussion, keyboards, keys, theramin, didgeridoo, flute and bass. "...The band was kind enough to send a CD-R of their latest single, to be included on the soon-to-be-released album Feathers for Flesh. Comprising the studio/album version of "Beggars & Thieves", which is a gorgeous yet dark acoustic piece featuring the haunting vocals of Shelley, who sings the medieval lyrics with mystical brilliance,as well as a mammoth live version of another tune from the new album, titled "Yellow Are His Opening Eyes." Fans of Wetton/Bruford era Crimson will get a big kick out of this extended and metallic improv, featuring thundering bass grooves and jagged guitar solos. Based on these two tracks, I think we are soon to be in for a real treat..." Pete Pardo, Sea of Tranquility Additional Song Samples: http://www.theredmasque.com/downloads.html ERIC KAMPMAN - THE GATE Format: CD Price: $13.00 Track Listing Eric Kampman's second solo album is a tour-de-force personal statement about spiritual growth. He uses lush melodies and multi-layered keyboards to paint a rich sonic palette, rich in textures and vocal harmonies, a real breakthrough and the pinnacle of a recording career by an artist who has been writing and recording music for over 20 years. The songs more or less function as an album-long suite and themes mutate and come around again in many different guises. As an added challenge, Eric recorded the entire album in 7 time - a challenge made even more remarkable by the natural unstilted flow of the music throughout. The theme of sevens is carried over to the cover art depicting a fractal in the shape of a gate, reflecting the 7 repeated patterns rotated 90 degrees clockwise - and also a visual representation of the Buddhist "Wheel of Dharma" bring the theme of spiritual awakening full cycle… Eric is joined by former "Now" band mate Barbara Crawford on percussion, and guitarist Gary Morrell and Alto Saxophonist Jamison Smeltz from "Ten Ton Chicken" "In spite of this album being only the manšs second solo effort, Eric Kampman is a veteran in the business with a career stretching twenty years back, including a stint as keyboardist and vocalist in the prog band Now. Kampmanšs first album "The Well" (see review in Tarkus no 20) was a somewhat sterile affair, and even if most of the music in "The Gate" is also electronic, the end result is quite different. He has used the number 7 as a starting point, something which, among other things, has resulted in all compositions being written in seven time. Donšt let this frighten you. Kampman is an elegant, sophisticated, inventive and tasteful composer who has evaded all the traps lying in this favourite neo prog rhythm. He has also avoided the sterile, all-digital sound which made "The Well" less attractive. The musical style is hard to classify, occasionally it is electro-prog in the vein of Bjørn Lynne or Andy Pickford (but better than both), occasionally it is melodic pop-prog in the vein of Izz and Ritual, and occasionally we find traces of neoprog like IQ and The Flower Kings. Kampmanšs great advantage is his compositional skill and his fine vocals. The record is full of good ideas and well-written themes. Always melodic and catchy, always challenging and full of surprises. "Donšt Try" is as close as you can get to a straight pop ballad, but it is saved by Kampmanšs great voice and an inventive arrangement. It is beautiful all the same. In contrast stands "The Gate Is Closed" where he almost combines Yes and Gentle Giant in the use of melodies and rhythm. "The Gate" is a record full of surplus and creativity, a record I have become very fond of because Kampmanšs intelligent and at the same time attractive melodies has managed to touch something within me. A record which deserves a large audience." Sven Eriksen, Tarkus Magazine Eric's recordings currently in release: Now's classic CD "Everything is Different Now" is available from the Syn-phonic label, and the 1999 release "The Well" is available from Big Balloon Music. Additional Song Samples: http://www.gneuron.com/samples.html VISUAL CLIFF - LYRICS FOR THE LIVING Format: CD Price: $13.00 Track Listing This Pittsburgh area trio (Rob Perez on guitars, Rick Mals on drums and bass and Rob Klan on keys) take their inspiration from the Psalms on their first release, spinning out inspired rock/fusion instrumentals as a reflection of their faith. The ripping but melodic songs never fall into the trap of showing off chops but instead use their ample skills to feature fine ensemble work and memorable arrangements. "American instrumental trio of electric guitars, keyboards/ synth, bass and drums, with a debut album that's as much fiery fusion as it is progressive. As a result you get structured, flowing compositions that range from progressive melodic to on-fire fusion, the guitars tending to take the lion's share of the lead duties, with a sort of Holdsworth-Metheny-Satriani mesh to the proceedings over eight tracks. Melody is paramount, while the band are unafraid to let rip all over the show, and the album comes across as incredibly forceful - at many times almost rock-metal in the guitar department - but it is that range of moods and movements that makes it such a thoroughly entertaining album, not really capable of being bracketed as "just prog" or "just fusion", etc. Hanging together excellently, similarly well produced, played and delivered, this is a very strong debut release." Andy G, CD Services |
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