Patrick Grant is a bit of a legend.
His unique career has taken him from Juilliard to Tisch School of the Arts, with stops at the equally iconic John Cage, Quincy Jones, Robert Fripp, The Louvre, a couple of operas in Vienna, Isadora Duncan and ASCAP. He is singular and beautifully strange, which, believe me, is a compliment. This remix of his first album “Fields Amaze“ recorded at Philip Glass’s studio in New York in 1998 is a homage to the original, yes, but it takes what he was able to create 20 years ago, with the technology that was available to him then and elevates it to a work that is much more than current and slightly less than futuristic.
“Fields Amaze and Other Strange Music” is Philip Glass meets the “Twilight Zone,” Ryuichi Sakamoto meets “Rocky and Bullwinkle.” The sounds spiral and pinch, they swoop around you like some kind of winking pterodactyl. At times warlike in its call and at others a peaceful echo, the sounds of keys resonating on and on minutes after his capable hands removed themselves.
This is not a dance album. Neither is it purely soundscape. The rhythms work in the same way a train rattles onward, sometimes quickening in spite of what you might imagine them to do, always effected by the world they populate. The harmonies complement, interact and then play at odds for a moment before they circle round again and surprise you. It is argumentative and charmingly obtuse, but still melodic somehow…no idea how it manages that.
This is cinematic prose in music, effortlessly creating visions in your mind while it quietly blows it. Since it’s two decades old one, can hear its influence in the music that followed. I hear bands like Japan, David Bowie of course, but also Talking Heads, Radiohead, Missy Elliot and Mos Def.
This is a beautiful, magical, urgent and relentlessly cool album. It will, if you allow it, become the latest soundtrack to your life. I know that it will accompany me through my world for quite some time to come. ”Fields Amaze and Other Strange Music” is visceral and contemplative and perfection.
Release Date/Label: releases October 1, 2018, via Peppergreen Media (http://www.peppergreenmedia.com/)
Production Info/Credits:
Patrick Grant: piano, keyboards, electric guitars, gamelan, percussion
John Ferrari: drums & percussion
Kathleen Supove & Marija Ilic: keyboards
Barbara Benary: additional gamelan
David Simons: Balinese percussion & theremin
Keith Bonner: flute
Thomas P. Oberle: clarinet
Darryl Gregory: trombone
Martha Mooke: viola
Maxine Neumann: cello
Mark Steven Brooks: electric bass
Alexandra Montano: vocalise
Lisa Karrer: lead vocal on If One Should Happen to Fall
All 2018 production, overdubs, revisions, and new stems recorded at Peppergreen Media, NYC and The Ferrari Factory, NJ. Mixed at Mercy Sound Studios, NYC – Garry Rindfuss: mixing engineer – Sheldon Steiger: album mastering – Patrick Grant: producer
The album title should be “FIELDS AMAZE and other sTRANGE music.”