Post rock & neo-psihedelični komorni prog-rock & Motown postrenesansni polifonijski jazz.
Sonically, The Knells employs a veritable armada of instruments, sounds, and ideas to explore a wide variety of musical spaces. Softer chamber music passages for strings, bowed percussion, and quiet guitars frequently contrast with louder, more rhythmically driven passages. The constant throughout is a trio of female vocalists that deliver hypnotic incantations — sometimes homophonically, and at other times in complex contrapuntal arrangements.
Lyrically, The Knells pays homage to the classic idea of the thematic "concept album," and examines some of the personal and eternal questions that define and confound the human search for meaning and significance. In service of this overarching theme, The Knells confronts such specific ideas as one's perception of the passage of time, the illusive nature of progress, the power of perspective in deriving meaning from one's own life, and the circular and ultimately transcendental — if somewhat violent — beauty of nature. - theknells.com/music
The self-titled debut from The Knells (a new ensemble formed by composer/guitarist Andrew McKenna Lee) featuring Mivos String Quartet and more, will be released on November 19 on New Amsterdam Records.
The Knells is a grand statement of purpose coming from Brooklyn-based artist Andrew McKenna Lee. A seasoned performer and composer who has showcased his talents in esteemed venues including the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, Lee created The Knells to be a working reconciliation of the multitude of different musical styles he has absorbed: as a rock guitarist who has performed alongside legends Billy Idol and former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones; as a singer/songwriter; as a serious concert music composer; and — as he is most widely known — a classical guitar virtuoso.
The Knells is the name of both Lee’s adeptly-composed hour-long song cycle as well as the hybrid ensemble Lee assembled to perform the project, consisting of three stunning female vocalists (Nina Berman, Amanda Gregory, Katya Powder), dual electric guitars (Andrew McKenna Lee, Paul Orbell), drums (Michael McCurdy), mallet percussion (Jude Traxler), electric bass (Joseph Higgins), and the critically lauded Mivos String Quartet. Blending Renaissance polyphony, symphonic lieder, jazz, classic and progressive rock, and even ‘60s Motown vocal music, The Knells finds Lee expanding his creative scope, embracing many of the stylistic streams that have come to define modern song in a remarkably cohesive and unique experience.
Lyrically, The Knells pays homage to the classic idea of the thematic “concept album,” and examines some of the personal and eternal questions that define and confound the human search for meaning and significance. In service of this overarching theme, The Knells confronts such specific ideas as one’s perception of the passage of time, the illusive nature of progress, the power of perspective in deriving meaning from one’s own life, and the circular and ultimately transcendental – if somewhat violent – beauty of nature.
Sonically, The Knells finds Lee employing a veritable armada of instruments, sounds, and ideas to explore the wide dynamic range of the amplified ensemble. Softer chamber music passages for strings, bowed percussion, and quiet guitars frequently contrast with louder, more rhythmically driven passages. The constant throughout is a trio of female vocalists that deliver hypnotic incantations - sometimes homophonically, and at other times in complex contrapuntal arrangements.
The Knells was chosen for the title of the project for its connotations of sound (i.e. the ringing of a bell), its associations with death, and the way these two elements play into the overall fabric of the work. This interplay is further enhanced by the album artwork, which was designed by renowned artist Shepard Fairey. Overall, the album is an adventurous and rewarding exploration of the sounds and significance of the world around us.
Previously, Lee has released two commercial recordings. His debut release on New Amsterdam Records, Gravity and Air, was named one of the year’s “Top Ten Best Classical Albums” of 2009 byTime Out Chicago. Released the same year, Solar/Electric also met with critical praise, most notably from composer Steve Reich, who declared Lee’s realization of his work Electric Counterpoint, “a magnificent performance beautifully recorded.” - www.newamsterdamrecords.com/
The Knells' self-titled debut album must be one of the most original-sounding albums released in 2013. The hour-long recording captures the group, ostensibly the brain-child of Brooklyn-based composer-guitarist Andrew McKenna Lee, boldly collapsing whatever gaps are taken to exist between prog, rock, and classical genres. His decision to meld such disparate styles was deliberate, as he wanted to try to reconcile a number of different styles with which he'd been involved: guitar-based rock music; singer-songwriting; formal composition; and classical guitar. On paper, the idea of combining instrumental rock playing with classical singing and strings might seem like a hard sell, but in this case it succeeds—even if it does require a few spins for the listener to wrap his/her head around it. To bring the music into being, Lee gathered together female vocalists Nina Berman, Amanda Gregory, and Katya Powder, electric guitarist Paul Orbell, electric bassist Joseph Higgins, drummer Michael McCurdy, mallet percussionist Jude Traxler, and the Mivos String Quartet.
The music's two primary threads come together in the opening track “Airlift,” which begins with a bruising guitar-bass-drums sequence that resembles Rush at its proggiest before segueing into a choir episode that's, timbrally speaking, reminiscent of the vocal style heard on Steve Reich's Tehillum (Lee's engagement with Reich's work comes by honestly: the guitarist has recorded Electric Counterpoint, which Reich described as “a magnificent performance beautifully recorded”). Here and elsewhere (the aptly titled “Synchromesh,” for example), the incantatory melodies chanted by the three clear-throated singers arc gracefully, sometimes contrapuntally and sometimes homophonically.
The vocal-free guitar settings show how virtuosic a player Lee is, but they're not about grandstanding. Instead, they're legitimate musical pieces that require technically skilled players—in this case Lee and fellow guitarist Orbell—for their realization (the bluesy “Dying in Waves” stands out in particular for its nuanced guitar interplay). The album's a bona fide feast for fans of electric guitar playing, with wah-wah and finger-picking present in equal measure. The other musicians impress, too, with the muscular playing of Higgins and McCurdy giving the material particular oomph and the string players (during “Distance” especially) and Traxler adding ample colour and dimension to the music.
There are moments that play like direct nods to prog figures: the three-minute setting “Spiral Proem” could easily pass for a lost Fripp improv from the Starless and Bible Black or Red sessions, and there's a lightning-fast run within “Spiral Knells” that could similarly pass for a brief cameo by Steve Howe. Speaking of which, The Knells' music sometimes achieves a prog-like complexity that begs comparison to Yes during its Tales from Topographic Oceans period, and were one to replace the three singers with Jon Anderson and the strings with Rick Wakeman the distance between the acts would be surprisingly small.
Lyrically, Lee appears to have had a lot of weighty philosophical issues on his mind, with the material pondering the circularity of time and futility of existence, among other things. Those conversant with philosophy might detect allusions to Zeno's paradoxes (“Half is all that you can ever hope to go” in “Distance”) and Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence (“Both time and rivers—they both flow forever” in “Fray”) within the texts, but no listener need be familiar with the discipline in order to enjoy the album's material.
It's noteworthy that while Lee presumably could have released the album under his own name, he opted to present it as a band recording—a move that suggests he came to regard the so-called chamber-prog project as having developed into something greater than the work of a single creator (even if he was the one who wrote, recorded, mixed, and produced it). That the album ends up sounding as cohesive as it does, especially when its component parts are so different, is a compliment to Lee as well as his musical collaborators. - textura.org
photo: Ron Silver
photo: Ron Silver
BACKTRACKING WITH THE KNELLS' THE KNELLS
As if releasing one of 2013's most original sounding albums wasn't enough (read the textura review here),
The Knells now complement that feat with an in-depth, track-by-track
breakdown of its self-titled debut album (which also, incidentally,
nabbed the number nine slot in textura's 2013 top 20 albums list).
Fronted by guitarist-composer-lyricist Andrew McKenna Lee, the
ensemble's bold fusion of guitar-heavy prog-rock with classical singing
and string quartet playing sounds unlike anything else released in
2013. It's wonderful to be granted such insight into the recording by
those who created it, and we are indebted to those who contributed to
this illuminating album overview: Andrew McKenna Lee, guitar and writer (AML); Nina Berman, soprano (NB); Amanda Gregory, mezzo (AG); and Mike McCurdy, drums (MM).
“AIRLIFT” (mp3 download)
AML: The instrumental intro
of this track is probably one of the highlights of the album for me. The
chiming guitar texture—interwoven with Joe's tight, sinewy bass line
and Mike's melodically nuanced drum part—falls through a series of
unsettled, blues-influenced riffs and harmonies that conjure an image of
“‘70s classic rock meets chamber music.” Not so incidentally, this is
one of the ideas that underlies the whole album.
The part that makes it for me, though, is at
3:58 when the groove finally sets in. This whole section is a mishmash
of parts in different meters, which lends it a revolving, kaleidoscopic
kind of feel. I love the way Nina and Amanda's vocals float above it
all, with Katya's lower countermelody supporting them. The strings play
along while Paul drifts in and out of the texture with the vibraphone in
various, slightly askew patterns of guitar harmonics.
NB: “Airlift” has a really
relaxed, easy groove to it, which is interesting because the lyrics are
anything but! Andrew not only wrote unusual and interesting music, but
also managed to compose his texts in a way that beautifully juxtaposes
spun-out, lyrical lines with the feelings of emptiness and yearning on
the search for something greater than oneself.
MM: The opening of this tune
reminds me of a band I loved in college (and still love!) called Polvo.
That guitar lick of Andrew's inspired me to come up with something
reminiscent of a drum line they might have had... melodic and heavy.
The middle of this tune is one of my favorite
sections on the entire record. Around 4:30, it coalesces into an
anthemic, beautiful, almost-chorus. This is one of the things I think
Andrew has really excelled at in this album, and one of the things that
is so new with this sound: creating pop-like structures without having
hardly any pop-like structures.
“THREAD” and “FRAY”
AML: Although they're two
different tracks, these two tunes definitely go together. “Thread,” with
its reverbed-out wah-wah guitar and backwards loops, is supposed to
sound something like a human lava lamp. In contrast, “Fray” is really
like a huge anthemic ballad, propelled forward via a solid chord
progression and a distinctive rhythmic pattern in the kick drum. Paul's
tremolo'd-out guitar part creates a beautiful sense of depth and space
amidst an ensemble texture that's quite dense and homophonic.
NB: The harmonies of “Thread”
are full of unresolved dissonances, which I like to think of as
Andrew's modern-day answer to the intense word painting of certain
Baroque and Renaissance composers, most specifically, Monteverdi. I like
his description of “Thread” as “a human lava lamp —it's very apt. He
purposefully confuses the listener's sense of pulse: accents on
different parts of the measure make it delightfully difficult to discern
whether the meter is in two or three.
As “Thread” dissolves into “Fray,” we are
suddenly thrown into the realm of more traditional harmony and are
relieved by three voices singing in thirds. It feels like an intense
release after the ambiguity of “Fray”; however, the two-versus-three
dichotomy of the metric structure in “Fray” is expanded to the level of
the bar: instead of creating ambiguity around the pulse, Andrew begins
to play with measures of three versus measures of two. As in “Airlift,”
this appears to be a subtle form of text painting: the lyrics describe
the seemingly futile attempt to hold on to the beautiful moments in our
lives even though they will inevitably slip away into nothingness—the
classic existentialist's dilemma exemplified musically!
AG: We all have our own
conversations about time, but Andrew's lyrics in this piece are
intensely real for me. I come out of the texture and sing “As they fall
through your fingers,” referring to both time and water. I think about
this line as I watch the countdown on a crosswalk across the street.
This piece closely represents my experience of time and its rapid loss.
MM: “Fray” was one of the
most difficult drum parts to come up with on this record, but once it
was laid down, it sounds so easy. Andrew and I had many a debate over
the course of rehearsing this song about what the feel was going to be
like. After a frustrating first few takes when recording it, I really
wanted to take what Andrew had in mind (heavy tom beats to match his
guitar line) but break it down to its core, so I just laid down a
steady, slowly crescendoing 8th-note ostinato on the snare under accents
on the kick and snare to match Andrew's guitar line. And that's what
the music was calling for—it just took a long time to discover it.
“DYING IN WAVES”
AML: “Dying in Waves” is my
personal response to the idea of the “guitar solo” and its place in rock
music. I knew that I didn't want guitar solos (at least in the
conventional sense) to feature heavily on the album. As a kid, I was
always heavily drawn to Jimmy Page's acoustic musings, like “White
Summer / Black Mountain Side” and “Bron-Yr-Aur,” tunes that influenced
me greatly and are in many ways partly responsible for my eventually
getting into classical music. “Dying in Waves” is my way of responding
to those songs and is really an homage to Mr. Page.
MM: Not much to say here, other than that Andrew deserves the Pulitzer Prize for his phenomenal guitar solo.
“DISTANCE”
AML: Interestingly,
“Distance” is really just “Dying in Waves” with the band. The harmonic
progression and the motives are all essentially the same, the exception
being the bridge in the middle, where the MIVOS Quartet completely
shreds a string quartet solo. This was another manifestation of my
wanting to address the classic role of the guitar solo—placing strings
in that role seemed like it might be an interesting alternative.
The lyrical idea behind “Distance” was
inspired by the “asymptote” in mathematics, wherein a curve approaches
an axis in infinitesimally smaller amounts but never reaches it. This
idea completely blew my mind as a seventh grader: as an adult, it seems
like a beautiful metaphor for the impossibility of perfection, the
limits of relationships, and the fulfillment of desire.
NB: “Distance” is one of my
favourite tracks on the disc. When Andrew first explained it, I
immediately fell in love with the idea of the asymptote as metaphor for
the limits on ultimate fulfillment. I really enjoy singing this song
because the extra-musical ideas behind the text dovetail nicely with the
compositional structure. For example, the very nontraditional
relationships between key areas in the piece are “wrong,” i.e., they're
often close to what is expected given the harmony, but they don't quite
make it all the way there.
AG: I related to this piece
incredibly when I thought of how close I am to my twin, though as
humans, we never truly reach “knowing” one another or “being with” one
another in the way we are with ourselves.
MM: This tune is good example
of how the structure of the drum part can make a song have a sound it
might not have had otherwise. The fills I play that end the phrases of
the choruses in “Distance” aren't what one would typically choose to do
along with the music that Andrew wrote here. What I heard in the moment
(which is when much of the best drumming occurs) was the need to connect
these phrases (which end on the 4th beat of certain measures), rather
than just punctuate them. So playing the fill over the bar line—starting
on two and playing through the next bar, ending on four—really drives
these lines.
“SYNCHROMESH”
AML: “Synchromesh” was the
first song I wrote for the album, and maybe more than any other, it
encapsulates the variety of influences I was trying to distill down into
a “song.” I love the section beginning about 2:45, where it settles
into an episode of gradually entwining vocals between intermittent
outbursts of guitar loops, edgy spiccato strings, and bowed vibraphone.
The part that takes the cake for me is the
end, when the drums and bass re-enter under a repeated guitar arpeggio
that owes something to Mahavishnu Orchestra's Birds of Fire.
The ecstatic re-entrance of the vocals at 3:45 is put over the top by
Paul's melodically ascending guitar solo, which creates a really
beautiful tension against the girls' more static vocal parts.
NB: The rhythmic structure of
“Synchromesh” is more complex than any of the other songs, and the
instrumental sound is edgier. It feels like a turning point: a great
many of the vocal lines are less idiomatic, but these moments are
contrasted with highly vocal, lyrical writing. This is in keeping with
the contrast between the very mellowed-out guitar ostinato at the
opening of the song and the rougher sound of the guitar toward the end
of the track. I love the slow-moving crescendo (in terms of not only
volume, but texture, intensity of dissonance, and so forth) that defines
this song. The constant push forward is really energizing.
AG: As an individual
vocalist, this piece gives me the experience of harmony that a singer
desires in an ensemble. The forward homophonic motion moves us like a
flock of geese towards an epic horizon. Then at the end, our voices are
layered and syncopated, which suddenly reminds of a Renaissance carol.
MM: This tune is a lot of fun
to play. It just lays right: very groovy. The drum part at the end—the
6/8, 9/8 groove—is one of the few that I just read straight off of
Andrew's chart, even the open hi-hat beats. Andrew has a fantastic
rhythmic sense... and he had this idea from the inception of writing the
tune... and that solo of Paul's is incredible.
“SEETHE”
AML: “Seethe” is a very
sentimental tune that, in spite of its warped harmonies, owes a lot to
the blues. I'm fascinated by the idea of “deep sentiment” being
delivered in a cool, ironically dispassionate way. For me, Bob Dylan was
the king of this, especially in some of his early songs like “Ballad of
Hollis Brown” and “With God On Our Side.” The emotional weight of those
songs is belied by his detached delivery, which somehow makes them all
the more powerful by leaving the interpretation of the lyrical scenes he
creates up to the mind of the listener.
In that same way, the vocals in “Seethe” were
meant to seem cool, detached, and distant. I feel like the emotional
heart of the piece is in the slide guitar solo at 3:15—the only place on
the album I allowed myself to have a proper “solo” in the more
conventional sense.
AG: At first, this piece
wasn't my favourite. Now, I get it, and I connect with it in more ways
than any other. The exaggerated slow tempo allows the voices to create a
visceral image for the listener—an image of “time,” and the way that it
desperately prolongs and drags. As a singer, it's a wonderful thing to
allow our voices to merge in a drowsy and dampened sort of way, rather
than having to foster inauthentic energy.
MM: This tune is gorgeous. My part is very basic... but sometimes the most fun stuff to play is the simplest!
“DISSOLVE”
AML: When I first began
developing ideas for the album, I was interested in using loops as a way
of creating various textures in the guitar parts, which I always wrote
first as a foundation. The challenges of doing this live,
however—especially in the context of more through-composed forms with a
lot of meter changes—, made me eventually reconsider: I didn't want to
chain the band to a click track in order to keep everything in sync.
I've always been interested in looping phrases
of different beat lengths and hearing what the resulting counterpoint
is like. You can hear this approach in the vocal sequences at 3:51 and
again at the end around 3:49.
MM: As a drummer I often try
to figure out how to play something normal in a very different way. Why
play the same 4/4 groove that's been played a thousand times before?
When I'm developing a beat, I try to keep it as simple at its core as I
can; even if the beat is made up of complex rhythms, I want it to sound
simple but have a really different feel. The groove in the opening of
“Dissolve” is a good example of this simple complexity: while it sounds
like a simple half-time groove, I have this crazy hi-hat pattern over
the beat, created by alternating my stick on the cymbals and closing
them with my foot in a funky 16th-note pattern. This sort of creates a
16-beat hocket feel (like kotekan in Balinese Gamelan) over this
half-time groove. It's fun.
“SPIRAL PROEM” and “SPIRAL KNELLS”
AML: Like “Thread” and
“Fray”, these two tracks belong together— “Spiral Proem” essentially
functioning as a prelude to “Spiral Knells.” The proem was inspired by
my personal discovery of the e-bow, a gadget that I had, ironically,
never played with before. Musically, I was trying to imagine what might
happen if somebody crossed the opening of Bartók's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta with a more Black Sabbath kind of vibe.
“Spiral Knells” is the track where I kind of
“figured out” what the entire album was about, and how to write it. It
was definitely the keystone of the creative process for me. The whole
piece was inspired by my acquisition of an electric 12-string guitar, an
instrument for which I had been lusting for a long time. Once I got it,
I put it into a relatively weird tuning (CGDF#BE), which opened up a
whole new world of guitar-based chordal possibilities on which the piece
is based. There's some really beautiful interplay between Mike's kick
drum and Joe's super-tight bass playing in this track that really makes
me smile.
NB: This piece amalgamates
elements of all the other songs on the album: a modern take on early
music (hocket, word-painting, etc.); complex rhythmic and harmonic
motifs to illustrate textual points; instrumental versus idiomatic vocal
writing; grittier versus smoother instrumental writing; and dissonance
as harmonic structure. When we first began rehearsing this piece, I was
certain that Andrew's sound world had been tremendously influenced by
Anton Webern because of how often what is known as the “Webern chord” (a
minor third plus a half-step) appears! This song is tremendously
satisfying to perform because it's so sectional in nature and so
all-encompassing that a good performance feels like an epic musical
adventure.
AG: My favourite vocal
experience is all the hocketing we do in this piece. In short, I will
continue a phrase that Nina starts and Katya will then finish. Not only
is it a cool effect, but it speaks to Andrew's creation of a
three-headed goddess. And if you can't quite hear the lyrics, the
listener hears our melodies like endless spiral staircases.
MM: “Spiral Knells” is an
intense trip to play. We've rehearsed the beginning of this tune, when
the drums and bass kick in, perhaps 200 times... no joke. For some
reason, it has just not sunk in to our souls between rehearsals, and we
always have to go back to it to refresh our interpretation. It seems
like it should be pretty easy to lock it in.... but, alas, (and maybe
it's me) it has just taken a long time.... but I think we've got it now!
I love this tune: it's like Black Sabbath-meets-Johannes Ockegham.- textura.org
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