MELD: prog, funk, jazz, grunge, electronica – fusion
Swallows’ Riff has joined MetaQuorum tracks District Line and North Sea Fret on Croydon Radio! Catch it there, on air all month!
And here are some more behind-the-scenes photos of Dmitry recording the first draft of Swallows’ Riff in a hotel room in Byala, Bulgaria – amazing what you can do with a micro-Korg keyboard and a laptop, providing you have the skill and inspiration!
Well, things have been moving pretty fast here at MetaQuorum. North Sea Fret finished 13 out of 100 in the IndieNationBlog viral competition – thank you all for voting! And the title track Midnight Sun reached number 3 in the All About Jazz popular download charts. We’ll be loading another track with them in a few days, so watch this space for the latest free downloads. Midnight Sun also went on air with BBC Newcastle Introducing last weekend, while for those of you living down South, tune into Croydon Radio to catch District Line and North Sea Fret, playing all month.
Meantime, the début album Midnight Sun is getting some great reviews both at home and abroad – check the Reviews page for the latest. Here’s what one of the pundits says:
“Yesterday I played Clodhopping on air for the second time, and as I said, it gets better every time you listen to it. Actually, that goes for the whole album. Silver Thread and Unexpected Encounter are especially beautiful, and Canzona too.
Eventually these kinds of records always turn out to be the true gems in your collection, because in the long run they keep on surprising you.”
Dick de Graaf, De Etherbak show, Smelne FM, http://www.smelnefm.nl/ (Feb. 8, 2015).
Check more reviews here: https://metaquorum.uk/reviews/
We had a really productive time last week with Koos over from Friesland, the home studio was definitely well into the funk groove! As well as jamming and trying out new sounds, Dmitry and Koos polished two new tracks, recording live drums and key bass. With pre-production complete, the pieces are all set to go to the studio, so we’re looking into ways of funding the next stage. Any suggestions welcome 😉
Hi folks!
The debut album Midnight Sun is out and about now, taking on a life of its own. To help you get to know the individual tracks better, we’re going feature one each week, and we’ve decided to kick off with the first track, District Line.
Here’s what one of our fans says:
“Just listened to District Line. I love the feeling of being on a busy, cheerful journey & the actual sounds of the train etc. are perfect!”
So here it is – safe journey 😉
Hi folks!
It’s the final countdown – MetaQuorum’s début single North Sea Fret is coming out tomorrow!!!
As well as great music, we’ve also prepared an 8-page exclusive artistic pull-out for you all which you can get tomorrow with the digital download @
https://metaquorum.bandcamp.com/album/north-sea-fret
Link going live tomorrow around noon.
The pull-out includes the story behind the track along with some fantastic atmospheric images of the powerful North-East scenery, Dmitry’s inspiration for North Sea Fret.
Here is a sneak preview from the pull-out.
Enjoy!
The MetaQuorum Team
Hi folks!
We’re delighted to announce that Ákos Páll Gecse from Tone Troopers is beavering away on a video for MetaQuorum’s forthcoming single North Sea Fret. With only a month to go, it’s all hands on deck, but we can already tell you the video has been shot in the magical misty landscapes of the North Pennines and features Dmitry playing on the North Sea coast.
Watch this space for a teaser clip!
KIM: ‘So, why ‘Clodhopping’? It’s an unusual title…’
Definition: “Clodhopper – someone who works on ploughed land, a country rustic or, literally, one who leaps from clod to clod.”
D.E. : ‘It was my wife, Carol, who came up with the title for this track. It was an early summer evening, I’d been developing the piece all day, our wee cottage was throbbing, and Carol came back from her evening walk in our wild northern hills just in time to listen to the finished version. She bopped around the home-studio, still in her clodhopper boots, and declared: “Perfect! Let’s call it Clodhopping!” And so the name stuck.’
KIM: ‘What inspired this piece?’
D.E. : ‘Actually, the main theme for this piece – like many of the tracks on the forthcoming Midnight Sun album –was written a very long time ago… It all started back in the USSR, in 1989 when I was rehearsing with the band FoxBox. With just a few days to go before our first 1,5 hours live gig together, things were pretty intense. You see, after recording the “Pereplanirovka” album with Panika, bass guitarist Viktor Mikheyev and I were looking for how to take things further, since we knew we wanted to go into instrumental jazz-rock fusion, but how? Panika was what you’d call now a jazz-grunge band – well, back in the Soviet Union we’d never heard of grunge, of course, but we knew all about the gritty, dirty sound as we had to use soviet made instruments which, frankly speaking, were not very good! Anyhow, Viktor brought in Roma Dubinnikov from Yabloko, an ‘official’ folk-rock band, as well as sitar player Sergei Gasanov and a couple of other guys. So the six of us had ten days to get to know each other and come up with full show! As you can imagine, improvisation was the name of the game! It was in one of our breaks that this riff came to me. In the end, we didn’t use it at the gig, and the band sadly collapsed later in 1991– along with the whole of the USSR!’
KIM: ‘Would you say the track was influenced by any particular band or musician?
D.E. : ‘It was back in the 80’s, and I remember two albums in particular which really revolutionized the music scene, introducing new sounds, and forging a new kind of jazz-funk-pop fusion. I’m talking about Miles Davis ‘Tutu’ and Peter Gabriel’s ‘So.’ Actually, these were only available on the black market in the Soviet Union, on reel-to-reel tapes, and the police could have busted you for listening to them… But anyhow, I would say they definitely inspired me.’
KIM: ‘Can you tell us a bit about the music. How would you describe this track?’
D.E.: ‘Well, I’d say it definitely combines elements of jazz and rock, and the rhythm is an upbeat funk. But there’s also some hip-hop in there, which is why for me it feels like a dance track, and why the title Clodhopping suits it. I’d initially recorded this track with programmed drums, but Koos stepped in a couple of months ago and re-recorded it with live drums, which makes a world of difference as it really gives the rhythm section more punch, more kick.’
KIM: ‘Thanks, Dmitry, we look forward to hearing the stories behind some of the other tracks on Midnight Sun!’
Hi folks!
Well, Dmitry’s back from his trip to Holland safe and sound – and definitely inspired! It was a pretty intense high voltage time, and there’s lots of new music out there for future albums.
Koos re-recorded drums, live, for two tracks on MetaQuorum’s forthcoming album Midnight Sun, so while Dmitry was out there, the two of them re-mixed the pieces in Koos’s home studio in Friesland overcoming numerous technical obstacles! After all they were working with two PCs on different OS’, four sound-cards, three DAWs all intricately linked by meters of cables.
The finishing touches have been added over on our side of the North Sea, by Ed Lopez from Loft Studios, who re-mastered them and slotted them back into the Midnight Sun album. The new drums give a great mellow rhythm to the bluesy title track, Midnight Sun, and really add a kick to the dance track Clodhopping.
Although they were kept pretty busy remixing these two pieces, Dmitry and Koos did find time for some live play, and we’re sure this will lead to something rather special!
KIM
Click below for a sneak pre-view of Midnight Sun and watch this space for the Clodhopping clip:
