Machine 475 is a prog-pop, multi-media project based out of Salem, Massachusetts.
For more information take your eyes down to the *stars* below the show info.
They will be showcasing their chops with their signature amalgamation of beats, guitar, harp, theremin, vocals, sitar, digeridoo & live video mixing with reactive animations THIS Saturday, December 6, at the West End Theater in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Show is ten bucks and starts at 7:30.
For more info you can go to www.machine475.com and/or www.thewestendtheater.com
*This* is little something I wrote for M75 upon the release of their debut album None of This is Real in 2007:
None of This is Real and Heaven is on the radio in the systematic, symphonic frenzy coming from Machine 475. The debut effort which started out as the brainchild of Richard Lewis (Photographer/Creator, not Larry David Compadre) is now a collaborative effort with James Forrest (Artist/Musician/Web Creative Dir. At the PEM) and an equally talented, eccentric group of Guests in a small studio, in a colorful Town in Massachusetts- just North of the very musically diverse and developed, city of Boston.
None of This is Real is a lap-top engineered collaborative fantasy ride- far beyond, and more adventurous, than anything the machine at Disney could ever churn out for its vast audience. The first track sets the tone with a very atmospheric board that glides silkily and seductively through what one would imagine as heaven, hell and purgatory; twisted together like a vanilla and chocolate ice cream cone in summer. The drumbeats are rainbow, candy shrapnel, exploding across the melting black and white keys. Each layer is a new thread that swirls under your feet to take you through a suburban dancehall, dropped in the magical beauty of a chemical aftermath. If you know Salem Massachusetts at all, you can truly imagine the start of this taking place at Machine’s home base, and then quickly whisking you away into the arms of the City just before blasting you through a breath of fresh air, South, into Kentucky, where the heat of earth and track two, Blue Kentucky Skies, surprises you with lust in the form of techno Blue Grass. You can imagine salsa, line-dancing in an open field, caressed by the history and richness of the South that is evident in the soulful, deep-rooted undertones
In what truly feels like rhythmic recess for hard-working artists and laborers, the transition from track three to track four (My City) can be equated to the elation you feel on an evening drive through your city, after a hard day on the job, or even just as you are about to descend upon your disco weekend wonderland. Any city could essentially be applied here, and with the excellence in music coming from Toronto these days, one might even subscribe to that, until the velvet femme fatale gives you a pleasurable cement-pounding, glittery guide down NYC’s famous St. Mark’s Place. As the beats thump and change, you can literally taste the clove and incense flecked air. My City is the 2007, gritty, dance version of The Orb’s Little Fluffy Clouds. Instead of clouds changing colors, it is the reflections of life on the sides of towering glass buildings. It is the billowing of smog, laced with the sweet cent of candied “street nuts” from the corner, where one would be dancing in the streets. No In, No Out takes you crashing through the monotony of everyday life into an industrial, revolutionary chase. Through the chase, you can feel the war between the partakers, the lust, followed by the experience of being wrapped up in combat, and finishing with the conquer. The aggressiveness that blasts through the speakers while this song is playing, is a definite adrenaline rush.
Track five, Song for J.F., is daydreaming in a song. Its flowing ambient, piano base is soothing and inspiring. It weaves together images of rural life and longing for the chaos and myriad opportunities that being hopeful under the bright lights (neon) of a city can offer one. Track six aptly titled Deep Dark Sea is the strongest in lyrical seduction beginning with brief, spoken words of a child and the noises of the beach, followed by the continuous story-telling over what feels like, and is the sound, of the movement of the sea crashing on the sand on a summer day. The song takes to the edge through the eyes of a girl staring down the horizon through an over-dressed struggle. The music pushes you out; requiring you to face reality head-on and the feeling of trying to keep your head above water, even when all you feel like doing is sinking in the darkness of the unknown. This briskly moves into the passive-aggressive sounds of American Gothic: Gray and textural, with a mid-western undertone countered by an industrial, techno beat that calls to mind the darkness of a rave that keeps you up all night in Middle America.
As you near the close of the album, you are taken down a euphoric tunnel of tranquil melody in Heaven On Radio. The journey is taken from the mind and words of a dreaming woman. It casts the ethereal, delicate qualities of a dream, caressing your ear drums and starting a movie in your mind. The voice melts into a timely record scratch wrapped around the sporadic juxtaposition of a story and into one of the most high-energy tracks. Through the journey of mismatched reality and non-reality, the sound winds you down again and takes you back to the whimsical melody where it all started, and into the longest, and final track When The Lights. The song calls Ween and Doves to mind, a sort-of Last Broadcast for this overall adventurous, and dreamy album, as the song evokes both images of the lights going down, and also of the lights going up after a show. Whether this was Machine’s intention, I am not sure; but either way, When The Lights Go is a perfectly constructed, bittersweet descent into the end of the mind-show that is a Machine 475 listening session. And for some perhaps, it brings the lights up and down for a second go.
For more information take your eyes down to the *stars* below the show info.
They will be showcasing their chops with their signature amalgamation of beats, guitar, harp, theremin, vocals, sitar, digeridoo & live video mixing with reactive animations THIS Saturday, December 6, at the West End Theater in Gloucester, Massachusetts.
Show is ten bucks and starts at 7:30.
For more info you can go to www.machine475.com and/or www.thewestendtheater.com
*This* is little something I wrote for M75 upon the release of their debut album None of This is Real in 2007:
None of This is Real and Heaven is on the radio in the systematic, symphonic frenzy coming from Machine 475. The debut effort which started out as the brainchild of Richard Lewis (Photographer/Creator, not Larry David Compadre) is now a collaborative effort with James Forrest (Artist/Musician/Web Creative Dir. At the PEM) and an equally talented, eccentric group of Guests in a small studio, in a colorful Town in Massachusetts- just North of the very musically diverse and developed, city of Boston.
None of This is Real is a lap-top engineered collaborative fantasy ride- far beyond, and more adventurous, than anything the machine at Disney could ever churn out for its vast audience. The first track sets the tone with a very atmospheric board that glides silkily and seductively through what one would imagine as heaven, hell and purgatory; twisted together like a vanilla and chocolate ice cream cone in summer. The drumbeats are rainbow, candy shrapnel, exploding across the melting black and white keys. Each layer is a new thread that swirls under your feet to take you through a suburban dancehall, dropped in the magical beauty of a chemical aftermath. If you know Salem Massachusetts at all, you can truly imagine the start of this taking place at Machine’s home base, and then quickly whisking you away into the arms of the City just before blasting you through a breath of fresh air, South, into Kentucky, where the heat of earth and track two, Blue Kentucky Skies, surprises you with lust in the form of techno Blue Grass. You can imagine salsa, line-dancing in an open field, caressed by the history and richness of the South that is evident in the soulful, deep-rooted undertones
In what truly feels like rhythmic recess for hard-working artists and laborers, the transition from track three to track four (My City) can be equated to the elation you feel on an evening drive through your city, after a hard day on the job, or even just as you are about to descend upon your disco weekend wonderland. Any city could essentially be applied here, and with the excellence in music coming from Toronto these days, one might even subscribe to that, until the velvet femme fatale gives you a pleasurable cement-pounding, glittery guide down NYC’s famous St. Mark’s Place. As the beats thump and change, you can literally taste the clove and incense flecked air. My City is the 2007, gritty, dance version of The Orb’s Little Fluffy Clouds. Instead of clouds changing colors, it is the reflections of life on the sides of towering glass buildings. It is the billowing of smog, laced with the sweet cent of candied “street nuts” from the corner, where one would be dancing in the streets. No In, No Out takes you crashing through the monotony of everyday life into an industrial, revolutionary chase. Through the chase, you can feel the war between the partakers, the lust, followed by the experience of being wrapped up in combat, and finishing with the conquer. The aggressiveness that blasts through the speakers while this song is playing, is a definite adrenaline rush.
Track five, Song for J.F., is daydreaming in a song. Its flowing ambient, piano base is soothing and inspiring. It weaves together images of rural life and longing for the chaos and myriad opportunities that being hopeful under the bright lights (neon) of a city can offer one. Track six aptly titled Deep Dark Sea is the strongest in lyrical seduction beginning with brief, spoken words of a child and the noises of the beach, followed by the continuous story-telling over what feels like, and is the sound, of the movement of the sea crashing on the sand on a summer day. The song takes to the edge through the eyes of a girl staring down the horizon through an over-dressed struggle. The music pushes you out; requiring you to face reality head-on and the feeling of trying to keep your head above water, even when all you feel like doing is sinking in the darkness of the unknown. This briskly moves into the passive-aggressive sounds of American Gothic: Gray and textural, with a mid-western undertone countered by an industrial, techno beat that calls to mind the darkness of a rave that keeps you up all night in Middle America.
As you near the close of the album, you are taken down a euphoric tunnel of tranquil melody in Heaven On Radio. The journey is taken from the mind and words of a dreaming woman. It casts the ethereal, delicate qualities of a dream, caressing your ear drums and starting a movie in your mind. The voice melts into a timely record scratch wrapped around the sporadic juxtaposition of a story and into one of the most high-energy tracks. Through the journey of mismatched reality and non-reality, the sound winds you down again and takes you back to the whimsical melody where it all started, and into the longest, and final track When The Lights. The song calls Ween and Doves to mind, a sort-of Last Broadcast for this overall adventurous, and dreamy album, as the song evokes both images of the lights going down, and also of the lights going up after a show. Whether this was Machine’s intention, I am not sure; but either way, When The Lights Go is a perfectly constructed, bittersweet descent into the end of the mind-show that is a Machine 475 listening session. And for some perhaps, it brings the lights up and down for a second go.
