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| Dancing from Ear to Ear! |
| band: Chapa |
| Album: A Look To The West |
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Preamble
I have been wrestling with this review. This is a great band making some kind of new music that defies description. They have more art in their music than I've heard half the time at the symphony hall, but they recently entertained happy tripping dance drunk crowds at Burning Man. My initial review is by and large a halliucination while listening to the music. A new music demands a new kind of description. What I would like to do is get every damn reader with a heart to buy this album and put it on a separate shelf where you keep reverent things that make you want to laugh and love and live in a dream. Do that for me, will you?
Everything came together as I wanted with A Look To The West, Billy. When I was making it, I attempted to describe the music but could never explain what it is that we were making. I knew deep down that this was special in the sense that it's hard to explain. I still struggle to describe our sound. And you are right, I've been developing this sound for many years, and it's finally maturing.
~ Russell Chapa
"I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it."
~ Igor Stravinsky
FOREWARD
It's been five days since the review of Chapa's "A Look To The West" was posted. I've written a review and heard music live twice since that day. I'm still listening to Chapa.
As a beginning music writer, I'm greedy to be the voice people first hear about the band Chapa and this album. I'm still listening to Chapa. It is as though it were the first time. The first writing I did about music was about 20th Century composition back when 20th Century was contemporary. I listened to Stockhausen, Harry Partch, Steve Reich, Toru Takamitsu, and actually met John Cage, Philip Glass, Lou Harrison, Mort Sutbotnik, Lucky Mosko and other composers, conductors and such musicians. I hear the same innovation and courage in the music of Chapa.
This is a tripping album. You may need your unobstructed mind to take the trip properly. If you imagine the Berlioz "Symphony Fantastique" and it's whacky and brilliant use of percussion and the insanity of the plot detailing an inner vision of the composer, imagine Tom Waits singing over the din. The thought gives me an out of the body experience. Tom Waits is the direct conceptual descendant of eccentric composer Harry Partch. The innovative imagination of America is kept alive by these people. Chapa is a colleague in that stream of new music and a brother to Harry Partch and Tom Waits in a very selective special club.
This may be the new opera I'm listening to. Scott Joplin's major new American artform Treemonisha advanced the form and was forgotten unperformed. Could this be the new operatic expression arising from a pop band?
I love psychedelic music. Dark Side of the Moon is a trusted friend. When I listen to Look to the West, I'm in a deeper dream. There is a 20th Century opera called Valis I could compare it to. Nobody will have heard Valis. That's my favorite 20th Century operatic work, just because it's so much fun. I wonder if they will bundle Valis and Chapa together at the Wherehouse?
Perhaps Chapa is the bridge over Roger Waters and Berlioz? Harry Parch? Tom Waits? My friend and a fine songwriter says he fell into a different world listening to this music. Maybe it should come with a warning label.
I have to make up for my inability to describe this music with enthusiasm. This is my fourth "chapter" to this review. That must show something. This album could pry stoners from the mountain of grunge. People like to trip. Is the world ready for Chapa? This is a test of the Internet personal networking system. Tell a friend.
This music must be supported.
The future isn't written. IT MUST BE HEARD!
THE REVIEW (A HALLUCINATION)
"A Look To The West" will take you into the experience of a dream. Words and words and words will pass you by fluttering by like a swarm of snowflake butterflies floating on strings. A gentle woodwind will warm your face as the carnival train rolls on bass drums powered by percussive pistons. Your blood and breath will dance while you glide in thin air with both feet on the beautiful earth. There is no apparent formula for the reorienting, dys-occidental experience. You may find yourself there. Ingest this music. You may find yourself. This album is a poem and by yourself you are a book you read every day as though you were writing it. This is a new creature: old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
If you try to understand a Chapa, you can rob it of it's meaning. Dreams, oceans, sound, emotions and realities come in waves to be experienced deeper than description beneath the bean counting conscious brain where the mind describes feelings only in songs. This "Look To The West" points further to the undiscovered country lost when Pacific beaches were added to the map of the known world. This review is a kind of Condé Nast Guide to the unknown world we feel a little further to the left of the land of time to remember.
In Chapa, driving power chords are delivered by Oboes. Skins, sticks, strings and breath are the fuel to guide us through the winds. The singer is a poet and builder of dreams whose best imaginary friend might be Eric Burden on the field of grass to "Spill the Wine," or David Gilmore from "The Dark Side of the Moon," or Harry Partch of the "Hobo Transcriptions." Crafts for floating and flying while sitting belted in to the upright position are called "songs" here. We think by feeling here, and everyone is in the band of many colored lights and shadows. The sound you here in this music is your song. The song I hear is my song. Follow the bouncing ball and sing along.
There is enough diversity to the controlled chaos of Chapa to embody the coinage: "East is West and West is East and never the twain shall meet." Come together.
POST SCRIPT:
I was blown away by this album, and maybe a little hypnotized. I think the review above presents the album properly as dense, deep, beautifully unfamiliar, and breathtakingly rich. I sent the following email to Chapa addressing the question of whether the music was accessible:
I think the album is accessible from the heart. No joke, man, that's where you guys are headed. I've written about 20th Century symphony's with extended tonal and nothing close to a recognizable time signature. You've hit the nail on the head with this music, but it's a new artform somewhere between composition and improvisation with lyrics that stand up on the page like a poem. That's very very rare! Those are damn art songs like Shubert doing jazzy pop with an orchestra and lyrics by jack Kerouac.
I finished the review and it's was so densely written I didn't see any reason to describe the songs one by one. My job is to make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, and make 'em feel religious. Most of all I try to confuse and compel people to the music. So I went out for a burrito with my artist friend T, and we headed back to his studio and listened to the album while he painted. When the CD was done, T was hooked.
Also, my favorite local songwriter heard the album over lunch. He wrote me this email in response to the review and the music on "Look to the West:"
Nicely done. I don't know WHAT to say about them, except it's amazing, a whole world to fall into, with it's own very ordered sense of logic, familiar and alien all at once.
I've gotta hear more, i think this band's amazing, should be heard by more people, the kids that are hunting for something different and challenging.
I think this album is as accessible as any new videogame with as many levels. This album can't be figured out, but it can easily be felt.
"I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it."~ Igor Stravinsky > |
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