M83's soundtrack for the film "Knife + Heart" is out today and I played bass on it!
Click the following link for more info: http://ilovem83.com/music/knife-heart/
CD Review | "Portalis" from Zack Teran by Alex W. Rodriguez
Electric bassist Zach Teran makes his debut as a leader with this quartet recording, featuring melodic, genre-bending original material that draws on his many years of experience as a professional musician anchoring rock, jazz, and electronic music projects in the Reno, NV area. The compositions reflect a spacious sonic palate, with both wide-ranging grooves and timbres uncharacteristic of a small group with no guitarist or keyboardist. Teran accomplishes this by skillfully incorporating electronic effects in the middle and treble registers on a few tracks, complementing his precise touch on the electric bass.
Teran is also supported by Miguel Jimenez-Cruz’s versatile drumming throughout, although this is sometimes obscured by being low in the mix. Tenor saxophonist Chris Gillette and trumpeter Brandon Sherman navigate this expansive musical territory admirably, giving the album its timbral through-line as well as contributing inspired improvised solos when called upon to do so.
The writing takes a plaintive, melodic turn midway through the album with “Standing Rock” and “How Our Hearts Were,” expanding the emotional range beyond the more assertive opening tracks. The writing loses a bit of focus after the carefully mixed interlude “Flatiron 2,” although the improvisers fill the space well. Despite this, the album leaves a sense of having traversed an expansive territory, not unlike the long drives across the American West that many Nevadans make on a regular basis.
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By JOHN SHAND
PORTALIS (Orenda)
★★★½☆
As Orenda Records' catalogue expands, so does both the scope of its music and the significance of the LA-based label. This, the debut album by bassist/composer Zack Teran, interweaves jazzy threads with streams of electronica, bursts of rock and more. Groove and drama are often uneasy bedfellows, the one tending to undermine the other, but not in Teran's work, the drama facet culminating in a soaring piece called The Keyhole. This is music always on the move to new destinations via an improbable collection of reference points. With Teran are trumpeter Brandon Sherman (who sometimes reminds me of the late Kenny Wheeler), Chris Gillette's incandescent tenor saxophone playing and Miguel Jimenez-Cruz's crisp drumming.
CD Review | “Portalis” is a random anthem generator
When this album gets catchy, there’s really no resisting it. Portalis will reel you in, hook line and sinker. But the moment of capture is a temporary state of being. It’s not long before Zack Teran and his quartet let go and start the process all over again.
What really gets me about this album is how its thoughts seem very scattered and that it could follow any direction at any time, and yet right when it appears another random change is in the works, an anthemic passage bursts from behind the clouds like a bold ray of sunlight, making everything it touches warm and happy and alive. It rarely manifests the same way twice. That randomness is half the reason for all the fun.
It’s in how “Along the Mountains in the Sky” skitters about dispensing little fragments of melody and then suddenly swells up for bold, thick statements of purpose. And there’s how sometimes Teran just leads right out with it. “Chasm” shows its true face right from the beginning and nothing about the rest of the tune changes that first impression, even as it goes about deviating from it in any number of ways. No different on “Meditation Space,” but where the previous track had a punchy, foot-tapping attitude, this time around the melody is treated as if it were used to paint a sky full of clouds lit up in sunset colors. Rhythmically, each of the album’s tracks fall into one of two categories: punchy attitude or a contented sigh. The result is that they feed off each other’s energy, where the contrast between the two tones makes each resonate that much stronger by way of comparison. And when viewed in the context of melodies in a transitory state, the constancy of the tempo causes the changes to stand out with distinction.
Your album personnel: Zack Teran (electric & acoustic bass, electronics, vocals), Chris Gillette (tenor saxophone), Brandon Sherman (trumpet) and Miguel Jimenez-Cruz(drums).