VOLUME ONE

This band is an instrumental music power trio from Boston: Jim Haney ( bass and composer), Sean McDermott (guitar ) and Don Taylor (drums). This album consists of one song titled "Volume One" (like the album itself) with a duration of nearly 38 minutes, played in continuity, with only two or three pauses done as silences. It has very energetic playing by the three members of the band, sometimes chaotic and noisy. Recorded live using analogue tape equipment, and with the aid of a sax and trumpet section and some strings, and sometimes adding some "electronic" noises, their music has several influences : Hawkwind, King Crimson, Emerson Lake & Palmer (without keyboards) and even Yes. I don´t know if they had the music written in scores or if it was recorded in parts, because the changes in structure are very frequent and I think that maybe they had some basic musical structures and they also had some parts on which improvisation was let free. There are also some influences from Jazz music and Jazz-Rock music on which the King Crimson´s influences are more clear for me. Some parts are also influenced by Avant ?Garde music, and the guitar playing sometimes sounds very influenced by Robert Fripp. The three main players are very good musicians, as they play without losing the continuity and the speed of the music. They sound like they rehearsed a lot playing together. Sometimes the music sounds "angry", "furious" and very heavy and aggressive. By the 30 minutes of duration, a string section is used to accompany the music of the trio in which seems the last part of the song which also finishes in an energetic mood. I think that they did some editing and processing to the recordings, adding some sound effects to some instruments like the trumpet. It is a very good job, and being recorded using tapes and without using computer technology and Pro-Tools makes it much harder to do it. It was released on cassette tape. A strange thing because this kind of recording media is now "out-of-fad" and less used by the general public. In conclusion,it is not the kind of music that I listen to very often but sometimes it is good to listen to energetic heavy music like this.