|
Press Releases from Ivory Tower Music |
||
|
July 12, 2004 LAND OF CHOCOLATE
RELEASES SECOND FULL-LENGTH CD, REGAINING
THE FEEL. With July 9 release of
their sophomore effort, Regaining
the Feel, Chapel Hill’s Land of Chocolate seem to be gaining
momentum as they roll through the summer.
The band timed the release of the new CD to coincide with the North
Eastern Art Rock Festival (NEARfest), which has been held annually in July
for almost a decade in the Philadelphia/Bethlehem area and marks the
beginning of a series of festivals held in the US to celebrate progressive
rock music. After several
online radio stations previewed the entire CD, Land of Chocolate debuted Regaining
the Feel live at The Sterling Hotel in neighboring Allentown on the
eve of NEARfest, and sales of the CD were brisk all through the festival
weekend. Following up on the
NEARfest debut of the new CD, Land of Chocolate will join the Erik
Norlander Trio for a brief tour of the East Coast in August, with stops in
the New York, Boston, and Washington. DC areas, and end the summer with
shows at ProgDay (an international festival held in North Carolina) and
Prog in the Park, an open-air festival in Rochester, New York. While the future is bright
in the Land of Chocolate these days, things have not always been easy for
this quartet of progressive-rock musicians.
Keyboardist and singer Jonn Buzby first formed the band in 2000,
after breaking with Finneus Gauge—a band that garnered much critical
acclaim for its two studios albums but that also fell victim to the
proverbial “artistic differences.” Land of Chocolate’s freshmen release, Unikorn on the Cob (Slipt Disk), was released in 2001 and sold well,
winning fans and receiving dozens of rave reviews.
The band soon began to experience a series of personnel shifts,
however, and Buzby eventually decided to leave his native Philadelphia
area—and his remaining bandmates—to re-form Land of Chocolate in
Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The new Land of Chocolate
line-up consists of Buzby, with Wes Hare on drums, Gerald Wilson on bass
and vocals, and John Covach on guitar and vocals.
Hare and Wilson are relative new-comers to progressive rock, but
guitarist Covach, who is a music professor at the University of North
Carolina, has a long reputation in the prog-rock community.
With a Ph.D. in musical scholarship, Covach is recognized as one of
the country’s foremost experts on the history and analysis of rock
music, having written numerous articles and editing scholarly books and
journals, in addition contributing to a regular column in Progression,
a quarterly magazine devoted to the prog scene.
As a performer, Covach has also played both rock and classical
music in the US and Europe. Covach’s teaching at
Carolina played a chance role in his joining Land of Chocolate.
“After I finished teaching a class one day, I stopped to check
out one of the message boards in the department.
There was Jonn’s ad looking for a guitarist.
I pulled the ad down so no one else could respond and called him
right away,” Covach admits. Musically,
Buzby, Hare, Wilson, and Covach clicked immediately and began to rehearse
furiously. By August 2003 the
new line-up had released Assorted
Non-Pareils, a limited-run EP containing four tracks.
Fans liked the band’s new sound and the EP would prove to be a
musical taste of things to come. Recording
sessions for Regaining the Feel
began in early 2004, as the quartet balanced recording with several live
performances over the first half of the year.
“We ended up with about an album and a half of new material,”
says Covach, “so we had to cut a few tracks.
They’ll make it onto the next album.”
By June, the new CD was mixed and mastered, and ready for the July
9 release. “Jonn writes most of the
material—he comes in with a lot of it pretty worked out.
But he gives me free rein in the guitar department.
I can really do whatever I want,” says Covach.
“Jonn’s a bit younger than me, so his musical influences are
mostly 80s and early 90s bands. I
guess I’m a 70s kind of guy, since my favorite electric players are
Steve Howe, John McLaughlin, and Steve Morse.
But the blend of musical styles works well together.” Buzby’s writing
frequently employs odd time signatures and quick harmonic shifts,
suggesting the influence both of classical music and jazz fusion.
According to Covach, “Jonn has a keen ear for harmony, and likes
progressions that shift between keys a lot.
I wouldn’t say the music shifts around as much as Coltrane’s
‘Giant Steps,’ but it does keep us all on our toes!” The ten tracks on Regaining
the Feel range stylistically from the moodiness of “Misanthropic
Cattle” and “Ungrateful,” to the heavy aggressiveness of “Killing
with Kindness” and “Regaining the Feel,” to more straight-ahead rock
numbers like “Film at 11” and “Military Mindset.”
Building on the firm foundation of Wilson’s solid bass and
Hare’s intricate drumming, Buzby and Covach weave layers of keyboards,
guitars, and (with Wilson) choral vocals to create tracks that are often
symphonic in scope. “We’re all very happy
with the way this CD turned out and we love to play these tracks live,”
says Covach, “but we’re also eager to get back into the studio to
record the next album. There’s
a lot of music in this band right now!” Land of Chocolate can be
contacted through Ivory Tower Music: ivory_tower_music@yahoo.com,
(919) 968-9562. More
information is available on the Web: Land of Chocolate: www.landofchocolate.com John Covach: www.johncovach.com Erik Norlander: www.eriknorlander.com NEARfest:
www.nearfest.com ProgDay:
www.progday.com Prog
in the Park: www.prog90.com
|