Like Nothing You've Ever Heard

We've all seen this phase: Like Nothing You've Ever Heard. Whenever I read it, I always think "this artist doesn't listen to enough music". That isn't a bad thing until you want to explain to others what you sound like.

Music is highly subjective, and often difficult to explain. But it is quite rare when music comes along that is truly unlike anything we might have heard.

It is said that when Igor Stravinsky first attempted a performance of Le sacre du printemps (or "The Rite of Spring") about a hundred years ago, some of the crowd booed, others argued, fistfights broke out in the aisles, and much of the music was unheard after a point because of the rioting. Eventually the police were brought in to subdue the crowd.

The fact the there is still quite a bit of debate over what exactly happened (and why) at the show that night, leads me to believe that the audience truly experienced something new; they were not at all prepared for it, many of them apparently had no reference for it, and it led to some surprisingly base emotional responses. It also means that you can't blame that sort of thing on rock ;)

Over time, some have said that none of the rioting at Stravinsky's performance ever happened. I think this is also a response to something so new we cannot immediately accept it; so we dismiss it altogether: it never happened. This is akin to those who believe we never walked on the moon. It seems impossible, so it could not have happened. And because we have not been back, in some ways it remains a new idea.

From these examples I glean that perhaps an artist doesn't want to state such a thing - "Like Nothing You've Ever Heard" - unless they want to be unpopular or at least controversial for a decade or so! In any case, as artists and musicians 'new' doesn't happen as often as we'd like in our own creativity, and perhaps we are better off leaving explanations of music style to more objective ears, if we can find them.

A different example of new: What Björk is doing with her new release Biophilia is new, but perhaps not so much musically groundbreaking as technologically (the first App album, I believe). We'll have to wait and hear it all to find out.

Not even what Bach did stylistically was new - he was just a better composer than most writing in his day, and a gifted improvisationalist.

My group Gravity Tree strives to be original, and we're on somewhat of a mission to explore what's new - new to us as musicians, as songwriters. However, we're the first to acknowledge the scores of influences. We hope we've never been misquoted with a "Nothing You've Ever Heard" phrase, and we'd never say it.

I might struggle with what to call the music I make. But I cannot worry too much if anyone has heard that kind of thing before, or if someone thinks it sounds 'old'. Old is as subjective as music itself. Is '90's music old? Are the Beatles old? What about Mozart? More importantly, does it matter?

It may not be "Like Nothing You've Ever Heard", but as long as it is not "Exactly Like Something You Just Heard", I believe I am on the right path.

The best thing to do is to put out the music you enjoy making, and hope others enjoy it also. And listen.

www.gravitytree.com

Wait...prog rock for free

We're offering one of our more popular progressive rock pieces for free.

The song is Wait, an instrumental from the album "Ultimate Backward".

Just sign up at this link to get it (and our latest updates):


http://signup.gravitytree.com


Cancel anytime and keep the song. Stay with us, get more free music, updates and goodies. Your choice.

Others have compared our sound to King Crimson, Frank Zappa, Rush, Glass Hammer, Procol Harum, and the Flower Kings. Does that sound as messed up to you as it does to us? Draw your own conclusions, with a free song.

btw Wait won't stay free forever, so if you're interested, grab it soon.

http://signup.gravitytree.com


Thanks for listening.

www.gravitytree.com

Last week for Falling in 3s

This is the last week you'll be able to get our song Falling in 3s for free.

If you don't know about this, when you sign up for our newsletter and updates, you get a free song.
We don't send out updates very often, but if you decide to unsubscribe, we'll understand. And you get to keep the free music. Such a deal...

http://signup.gravitytree.com

For the last several weeks, the song has been Falling in 3s, from our album Life or Dessert?. But that's going to change next weekend.

If you want to be a bit sneaky (and that's fine with us), you can sign up now, get Falling in 3s for free this week, then score the next song next week when it becomes available (if you don't get a new link, just write us from the email you signed up with, and we'll make sure you get it).

http://signup.gravitytree.com

We also want to thank all our new fans who've signed up already this year, and of course those who have been with us for the long haul. We have some special things coming your way too.

Thanks for listening.

Gravity Tree

Motion Sickness

Finally on MySpace, the missing song from Gravity Tree: Motion Sickness. It's a bit messed up...but we wrote it that way. Hear the full-length version here

http://bit.ly/eAojDz

Latest music samples

We've been slow posting anything this year; no blogging, fewer Tweets, no real Facebook time. It has taken awhile - longer than expected, due to some 'life events', shall we say - to get new music out. But Gravity Tree will be back at it shortly. While you're waiting, here's a sampling of our progressive rock noise, in a new player. Talk to you soon...

Aim to Please on AiiRadio.net

Beginning this week, you'll be able to hear Aim to Please by tuning in to web radio www.aiiradio.net.

Aiiradio is a web site/station that serves up a lot of tasty independent progressive music (as well as a bit of comedy). We've been giving it a listen of late and liked what we heard, so we were pretty excited when they approached us to put our songs in rotation.

Aim to Please is the first song of ours to be featured on aiiradio.net, but we're sure it won't be the last, and we hope to have more songs from Ultimate Backward included in their prog rock programming. They also have a chatroom and forums, as well as the live streaming. Make sure you tune in and check out all the cool prog rock tuneage...head over to their site for all the details.

Gravity Tree Newsletter delays + MySpace music

Gravity Tree is having issues with one of the main service providers that assists them with the regular newsletter. If you haven't seen anything recently in your inbox, this would be the cause.

If you are on our new format mail list, everything is fine and you should see a newsletter over the holiday weekend. If you're on our old list (N1M), you might want to sign up for the new one (and get our song Falling in 3s for free as well).

signup.gravitytree.com

But the band is hard at work on new music, to be sure.

Also, you can now hear 22 Gravity Tree songs at full-length, on MySpace.
There are links in the playlists to allow you to purchase any song or album as well (through Amazon.com).

There are links to one of the main playlists...

http://mysp.ac/hso3N6

...and to the song page...

http://bit.ly/fVIxoI

This has been a long time coming, and we're very happy to finally have it in place. (btw, the main music player on www.myspace.com/gravitytree may not have these links yet. They reside on new song and album pages MySpace has set up.)

We hope your holidays continue to be safe and happy.

Gravity Tree

www.gravitytree.com