Dear Friends,

following up on our previous post detailing our release schedule for 2014 , we would like to introduce you to to the first of two next releases due out APRIL 7TH 2014:

Chat Noir’s Elec3Cities (RNR038/RNR038LP)

By organically blending elements of electronica and ambient music with bits of chamber music and jazz, the innovative trio of pianist Michele Cavallari, bassist Luca Fogagnolo and drummer Giuliano Ferrari has come up with a wholly unique sound on Elec3Cities that may establish a daring new direction for the piano trio. This delicate balance of electronic experimentalism and acoustic piano jazz has been evolving gradually from the group’s initial release in 2006, Adoption, and continued on 2007’s Decoupage through 2008’s Difficult to See You and 2011’s acclaimed Weather Forecasting Stone. But the three Italian musicians take it to a wholly new level on Elec3Cities, their most overtly experimental outing to date.

“Experimentation has always been a fundamental part of our work, in the past as well as now,” says bassist Fogagnolo. “We’d describe our journey as a ship adrift. If jazz was our starting point we’ve always felt free to explore different languages. So for us, Elec3Cities does not feel like a conceptual leap since we have been gradually incorporating electronic manipulation of acoustic sounds into our music all along. The unique circumstance of the three of us being in three different cities during the recording of this project created an opportunity for us to more extensively use electronic sounds as a common language.”

By creating their fifth album in a ‘virtual studio,’ the three members of Chat Noir showed that they are right on the cutting edge of recording technology. Indeed, the methods used in putting Elec3Cities together didn’t even exist five year ago. As Fogagnolo explains,

“The album was entirely developed by exchanging music session through a cloud-based system. So although the album is based on the usual three pillars – piano, bass and drums – the novel recording approach allowed us to have more time to devote to paying attention to small details. We could experiment a lot more in the post-production phase to manipulate the sounds and tracks. We had time to craft our work according to the original concept that we had for it, as well as ample time for it to take on a new form after multiple exchanges of ideas among the three of us.”

The resulting sound of this expansive, genre-defying project is at times powerfully cinematic (“Avant Buddha”) or delicately balladic (“Chelsea High Line”), dreamily evocative (“Pearls”), minimalist and ambient (“Aspekt”) or bombastic and rhythmically charged (“Radio Show”). Surprises abound within each instrumental journey, whether it’s the sonic excursion on “Peaceful,” which builds from ruminative solo piano to throbbing crescendo, or the dramatic “Our Hearts Have Been Bombed” which travels from zen-like minimalism to provocative dub-noise passages.

While the core of Chat Noir may have come from a modern jazz piano trio setting, somewhat along the lines of E.S.T. or the Bad Plus, Fogagnolo maintains that there is very little improvisation on their latest recording. “It always took a marginal place in our music,” he says.

“We always preferred to express our sound in a structured form rather than playing ‘solos.’ However, for Elec3Cities, each of us often improvised and recorded them as audio tracks for the others to listen to and spark different possible solutions for a theme or a sound as you hear it.”

Following in the footsteps of such pioneering North European electronic jazz artists as Nils Petter, Molvaer, Eivind Aarset,  Jan Bang, Eric Honore, Arve Henriksen and bands like Supersilient and Jaga Jazzst, Chat Noir are poised to take their place on that new music scene with the release of Elec3Cities, their most adventurous and potent project to date.

Elec3Cities available to PRE-ORDER NOW as

CD Digipack (with free mp3 download) – CD Deliveries Start Around April 7th

Single LP (180 gm Vinyl with free mp3 download) – Vinyl Deliveries Start Around April 28th

COMBO (CD Digipack + Single Vinyl + free flac download + free mp3 download) – Combo Deliveries Start Around April 28th

HD flac (24bit/96Khz lossless) download – available immediately

flac (lossless) download – available immediately

mp3 (lossy) download – available immediately

Elec3Cities will be available on  Online Stores / High Street Stores / Digital Stores (Itunes/Emusic/Amazon…)/Streaming (Spotify/Deezer/…)  from the second/third weeks of April .

Bob Belden Unveils a Dark Narrative of Manhattan on Second Animation Project, Transparent Heart, Available on RareNoise Records, September 25

Following on the heels of Animation’s 2010 RareNoiseRecords debut, Asiento, and 2011’s Agemo, saxophonist-composer-bandleader Bob Belden tells his own story on Transparent Heart. With his new Animation lineup consisting of young musicians hired from his alma mater, the University of North Texas (23-year-old keyboardist Roberto Verastegui, 24-year-old bassist Jacob Smith, 29-year-old trumpeter Pete Clagett and 20-year-old drummer Matt Young), Belden unveils a dark narrative as heard through the musical diary he has composed over 29 years of living in Manhattan.

An imposing electronic noir masterwork, Transparent Heart travels from Belden’s initial awestruck impressions of New York City (“Terra Incognito”) to his feelings of foreboding (“Urbanoia”) and hope (“Cry in the Wind”) as a city dweller on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, to the pervasive angst of post-9/11 Manhattan (“Seven Towers,” “Provocatism”). He also addresses the mass exodus of artists from the city (“Vanishment”) and concludes his musical memoir with the clash of the social classes manifested in the Occupy Wall Street movement (“Occupy!”). Belden has concocted a powerful, provocative suite of music that is charged by the intensely driving, highly intuitive playing of his young energetic Animation band mates.

“This record is not a jazz record, it’s about my life in Manhattan,” says the Grammy® Award-winning composer-arranger-producer. “In essence, the music on Transparent Heart is a reflection of the lingering tension since 9/11. It’s an honest look at Manhattan through music.”

The concept for Transparent Heart has been in the making for more than 30 years. “I first visited Manhattan in 1979 when I was with Woody Herman’s band. I’ll never forget seeing the dark shadows, steam rising from the streets, crowds of strange people lingering in Times Square well past midnight, all the tall buildings and how they created a post-gothic canyon effect. That’s ‘Terra Incognito,’ a term used by local residents to describe Central Park above 96th street. Darwinistic Urban Gentrification. The uncertain outcome of riding the subway late at night. Alphabet City. Bonfire of the Vanities. AIDS. Subway Gunman. Guardian Angels. Central Park jogger. Preppie murder. Sparks Steakhouse. That’s ‘Urbanoia.'”

“Cry in the Wind,” with Clagett’s muted trumpet carrying the melancholy theme reflects another Manhattan experience, “One night from inside my ground-floor studio apartment I heard the voice of a woman crying for help faintly mixed with the sound of the wind and rustling tree leaves. Bringing my phone outside, I saw this woman who had just been stabbed, and called 911. She reached up, grabbed my hand, and didn’t let go until the ambulance got there. I helped this woman live because I cared. This tune is about hearing the cries in the wind of extreme loneliness and helplessness that are heard all the time throughout the city.”

The darkly propulsive title track echoes the hard-hitting production that Bill Laswell brought to Herbie Hancock’s 1983 hit single “Rock It.” To listen to Transparent Heart is to think about Manhattan’s self-reflective nature exemplified by extreme conflicts between physical/corporatist and social/humanist structures and the perpetual sense of energy that is created and dissipated illogically in light and shadow.

“Seven Towers” is Belden’s reaction to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. As Belden reflects, “9/11 is a reaction to the power and influence that capital, centered in Manhattan and symbolically the World Trade Center, has on parts of the world, in the form of abject terrorism. I watched it happen from Chambers street in Lower Manhattan. This tune recreates my own autobiographical timeline of 9/11. It starts with the NORAD radio broadcast finding out a plane hit the North Tower; followed by the NYPD and NYFD responding. It’s very haunting. I believe that this moment has defined the course of history for Manhattan as well as the world at large. This album is offered in deep respect to those who lost their lives that morning of September 11, 2001 and to the families that have to live with this loss forever.”

“Provocatism” reflects the immediate aftermath of 9/11. “People fled the city as companies anticipated an economic downturn, laying off thousands upon thousands of workers. For years there were constant alerts, color-coded like a crayon book. Many small business, dependent on the World Trade Center complex, died after 9/11-replaced by the ubiquitous chain store, coffee shop, and branch-bank. The intense build up of the New York Police Department to the point of having one of the largest standing armies in the world, placing citizens under surveillance on the streets and in the subways-‘stop and frisk’ developed from this Quasi-military policing initiative.”

“”Vanishment” refers to the exodus of artists and musicians who couldn’t afford to live in Manhattan anymore to a point where the localized creative culture is now gone. Musicians work here in the clubs, but don’t live here. And you have this influx of college student musicians who have no real attachment to the city-it becomes a line on a resume. Thus, Manhattan post-9/11 is very different from the Manhattan that existed when I moved here in 1983.”

The final track, “Occupy!” is the most intense and harrowing of Belden’s musical memoir. His turbulent ode to the Occupy Wall Street movement is imbued with the sounds of screams and violence in the streets during clashes between protesters and police. “The Occupy movement is based on a psychological philosophy rather than political or industrial. These people are angry and frustrated with nowhere else to address their grievances, so they take to the streets-essentially declaring a philosophical war on Manhattan.”

The musicians on Transparent Heart are the most talented of their generation, performing complex operatic improvisations, sounds, and textures. They are serious musicians deep into the subtle and not-so-subtle nature of this music. That they are virtually unknown to the jazz public is a blessing, as you will hear them tabula rasa, with no conditions on what to expect. From this point on you will expect greatness from each one of them.

For Belden, Transparent Heart is a musical tool to get people to think about social issues. “Music must be returned to its place as a social engineer; provoking thought amongst society. This record is not about tunes, solos, and arrangements, it’s a way of telling a story that has something to do with my life, OUR lives, and for anyone who has ever landed with excitement, wonder, fear, and hope on this tiny island off of the coast of the United States. It’s not being a musician, but rather a citizen.”

Available immediately from the RareNoiseStore (.flac, .mp3 and CD-Digipack formats) and from all the usual digital stores (Itunes/Napster/Rhapsody/Spotify etc).

Here you may listen to a sample of tracks:

RareNoise Records will directly release the projects which most closely represent the label’s identity, which is focused on dark electronica, dub, abstract jazz and jazz vibes, alternative and ambient electronica, but also rock acts possessing the required level of originality.
RareNoise Productions will focus on a more diverse and eclectic set of projects, internally produced but to be released by other labels. The palette will extend from Italian pop-rock acts to extreme metal.
It is always very difficult to choose between projects – because we love them all!!!