Hello all! It has been years since I had a band, was in a band, or recorded with one. So it may come as a surprise to many, that I am at it again after such a long pause. But what should be known was that I really never stopped playing, recording in one form or another, and for a year in Italy I was very active as a musician. I basically answered an ad in a music shop (and I answered three in that day as well). The guys in the band have been playing together for the better part of two years, have played concerts etc. without a singer. I was charged with putting text and guitar parts to their songs with as little editing as possible to keep them intact and largely as they are. One week later I arrived with text for all of the songs and with only minor changes they are as I had presented them.
The band is Sascha drums Davide bass, Mirs guitar.
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Upper Strata - Further Down (snippet 2,6MB) | Upper Strata began as a side project in Colorado while working with heavy alternative band the Grin Fiends. That band increasingly felt like a volume competition and I feared my songs were being lost to the all the pounding and wailing. So I started to put the more sensitive quiet songs aside and found I had many after a time. Upper Strata refers to the top layer as in whatever I am working on now is at the top and the older things are buried beneath. So its members always vary over time and no one is really a member but more a co-worker for a time. This has always in truth been the approach except for a period of time with Jon Andrews when we formed a live duo in Colorado. The current approach is largely solo acoustic sometimes with over dubbed parts. Regula Sanchez is working with me on numerous tracks in several ways as bass player, keyboardist, engineer and even with some drum programing and vocals.
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My influences are varied but my lack of talent keeps my songs sounding the same someone else might call this a style I suppose. My earliest were through my parents the Beatles, Paul Simon, and Bob Dylan (the last my mom hid in the laundry room between towels from my dad something my brothers and I did later during the New Wave years for fear of religious family members trying to save us). The first stuff I began to listen to on my own came through the old days of WUSF and WMNF and their late night shows of then Punk and New Wave later Industrial, Techno, Alternative, Sub-pop stuff, and World Music. Eventually the Blues, Zydeco, and classic jazz they also played became important along side classic R&B and Soul. Earliest attempts at song writing included many of these styles and ideas (yes even a zydeco song) but came out sounding like Depeche Mode meets Billy Bragg on their way to an Elvis Costello show. Later I copied the Police or Sting the Chameleons UK, The Church, The Cure and really basic New Wave styles. After a 4AD period I went acoustic and have remained in this vein ever since. Both Grin Fiends and Upper Strata had an acoustic base of song writing and playing. My most recent efforts continue in this direction though I am working with some keyboards percussion and a drum machine at times. If I had to peg it I would say the new stuff shows my love of the late Elliot Smith, Beck, Travis, and acoustic blues of the Delta and Piedmont, especially Willie McTell and John Hurt.
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