Genre: Alternative/electronica/jazz/progressive rock
Influences: Tori Amos, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Stone Temple Pilots, Pink, Nine Inch Nails, Bush, Foo Fighters, Fiona Apple, Alice in Chains, Shakira, Black-Eyed Peas, B-52’s, Alicia Keys, Grover Washington Jr., Matchbox 20, Sex Pistols, Portishead, Eric Johnson, Death in Vegas, Prodigy, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Nina Simone, Nirvana, Jane’s Addiction, Greta Keller, Carlos Santana, Billie Holiday, Led Zeppelin, Ben Webster, The Beatles, The Doors, Bach, Eric Clapton, Beethoven, Mahler, Mozart, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Coleman Hawkins, Bobby Short, Phillip Glass, Coldplay, Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya, U2, Fleetwood Mac, Cheryl Crow, CSN&Y, Moody Blues, The Hollies, Howling Wolf, Robert Johnson, Canned Heat, Neil Young, Lenny Kravitz, Cream, and on and on and on….
Compared To: Higher Than Pope!
Band Members: Bob, Bob, Bob and sometimes Bob sits in!
Bio: HTP appears to be somewhat of an enigma. Not much is known,other then he is male, a soon to be published poet and hails from Salt Lake City, Utah. Here is a short Bio. I have assembled from bits and pieces gleaned from several of The Pope’s websites.
Although primarily a guitar band, HTP have no qualms about snipping bits from multiple genres and splicing the results together. HTP are not big on songs that evolve so slowly you fall asleep between intro and verse. Instead they practice revolution and from one moment to the next you have no idea what may transpire next as you are catapulted from one sonic event to another.
Continuities of time and space are disrupted in a heart beat by the weight of a Higher Than Pope composition. One second you are late 60’s retro and then next avant-garde progressive rock. There appears to be a genre warp as the HTP black hole collapses genre after genre, with none appear to escape unscathed.
My Review:
If you took all musical genre, from classical to electronica, threw them into a blender, out would come a cool, refreshing, very complex drink, called EO (Instrumental), which leaves you wanting more! That’s the best way to describe HTP’s current stop along the path of his musical journey.
New Beast: This is a very complex piece of music, folks. The more you listen to it, the more you discern from it! It begins with a very somber, powerful bass intro which had me immediately reaching for my equalizer to keep from overdriving on the low end! As the intro fades into the background the Pope treats us to an amazing electronic piano riff. From here the song progresses to a jazz theme with a nice bass guitar riff. As the tempo increases it becomes almost progressive jazz/rock while maintaining the blips and bleeps of electronica. The piece finishes strong with a Latin rhythm. As I said, this is a very complex piece of music, and I’m sure I haven’t covered every detail. Of course, if you aren’t in to analyzing it, its still a great song just to listen to!
Spin: From the beginning this is a much faster paced, more electronica oriented song. It displays snippets of a certain classical piece which became very popular several years back especially with synchronized Christmas lights! In fact, it was an interesting experiment when I loaded both songs into my Mixx software mixer and compared them! I won’t say any more about that, because it is skillfully woven into the piece. As with New Beast, this is a very complex composition, I just listened to it again and thought I picked up snippets of Vinyl “scratching”. The surprises never end!
New Beast and Spin are both very complex, well constructed and thought provoking songs. The more you listen to them, the more you learn from them and their true beauty and the skill of HTP’s composition shines through! If you want to be on the cutting edge of music and enjoy a smooth blend of musical styles, purchase a copy of EO(instrumental Version), the album on which both of these songs are found. Purchase details are available through the artists website. You won’t go wrong adding EO (Instrumental Version) to your collection! Thumbs up, folks!
New Beast and Spin from EO(Instrumental Version) by Higher Than Pope. Enjoy!
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For more info on Higher Than Pope and to purchase EO(Instrumental Version):
