Hamster Theatre | |
---|---|
Origin | Boulder, Colorado, US |
Genres | |
Years active | 1993–present [1] |
Labels | Cuneiform Records |
Members | Dave Willey Jon Stubbs Raoul Rossiter Mike Johnson Mark Harris John Grigsby [1] |
Past members | Deborah Perry Steve Doyle Greg LaLiberte Josh Wright Jay Trolinger Mark McCoin Mike Fitzmaurice Brian McDougall Matt Spencer Eric Thorin [1] |
Website | www |
Hamster Theatre is an American avant-rock, experimental, and folk jazz music group based in Boulder, Colorado. It is led by composer and multi-instrumentalist Dave Willey. The band has released three albums and has performed at various festivals, including Progman Cometh and ProgDay. [1]
Hamster Theatre's music is based on European Rock in Opposition [2] and is influenced by many sources, including Lars Hollmer, Erik Satie, Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, and Henry Cow. [3] In a biography on AllMusic, Dave Lynch wrote that the band "conjur[es] up beauty, magic, mystery, unpredictability, and manic energy and humor". [1]
Hamster Theatre was formed in 1993 by multi-instrumentalists Dave Willey and Jon Stubbs. Both had previously been members of Big Foot Torso, but Willey left to spend time in Europe where he experienced Rock in Opposition and related music. Willey was particularly drawn to the music of Swedish accordionist Lars Hollmer from Samla Mammas Manna. When he returned to the United States, Willey recorded a solo album entitled Songs from the Hamster Theatre, which he released on cassette tape (later reissued on CD in 1995).
Stubbs then joined forces with Willey and they formed Hamster Theatre, with an initial lineup of Willey (keyboards, guitar, melodeon), Stubbs (bass guitar), Deborah Perry (keyboards, vocals), Steve Doyle (guitar), Greg LaLiberte (saxophones, flute), Josh Wright (drums) and Jay Trolinger (percussion). The group played Hollmer covers and songs from Willey's album at venues across Colorado. Their first performance was on August 20, 1993, at the Penny Lane coffeehouse in Boulder, Colorado. [1] [4]
Hamster Theatre underwent several personnel changes, which included the departures of Doyle, Wright, and Trolinger, and the addition of Mark McCoin as the new drummer. During this time, Willey and Stubbs expanded their repertoire by incorporating accordion and trombone, respectively. In 1996 Willey (on bass guitar) and Perry (as a vocalist) joined Thinking Plague, an avant-rock group based in Denver. Consequently, Mike Johnson (guitar) and Mark Harris (reeds) of Thinking Plague joined Hamster Theatre.
In 1998, a new lineup of Hamster Theatre consisting of Willey (accordion), Stubbs (trombone), Johnson (guitar), Harris (reeds), Mike Fitzmaurice (bass guitar) and Raoul Rossiter (drums) recorded their first album, Siege on Hamburger City, live at Mercury Café in Denver. [1] The band's subsequent album, Carnival Detournement, was released in 2001. It was a studio album featuring Willey and Stubbs on multiple instruments, alongside Harris, Johnson, Fitzmaurice, Rossiter, LaLiberte and McCoin. Carnival Detournement received favorable reviews from critics "for its melodic, atmospheric, moody, and unpredictable blend of modern classical, avant rock, and European folk influences." [1]
In August 2002, Hamster Theatre performed at the first Progman Cometh festival in Seattle, Washington. The same lineup was used as for Siege on Hamburger City, except for Brian McDougall replacing Fitzmaurice on bass guitar. [1] Most of their performance, with mixing and mastering by Bob Drake, appears on the second CD of their double-CD, The Public Execution of Mister Personality / Quasi Day Room: Live at the Moore Theatre , released in 2006. The first CD of the album consists of studio recordings of compositions by Willey and Stubbs, also mixed and mastered by Drake. [2] A reviewer at AllMusic called the album "a landmark two-disc studio/live set proving that the European RIO-based sounds of the '70s and '80s have taken root and can sprout up almost anywhere, even in the post-millennial Rocky Mountain State." [2]
Further bassist changes in Hamster Theatre took place in the 2000s, with Matt Spencer replacing McDougall, Eric Thorin replacing Spencer, and John Grigsby replacing Thorin. [1] Hamster Theatre performed at ProgDay in North Carolina in September 2006, [1] and appeared in the documentary Romantic Warriors II: A Progressive Music Saga About Rock in Opposition (2012), [5] and the companion Romantic Warriors II: Special Features DVD (2013), where they were filmed performing at the Alexander Dawson Arts School in Colorado in 2011. [6]
Samla Mammas Manna was a Swedish progressive rock band often characterized by virtuosic musicianship, circus references and silly humour, similar in many ways to the song-writing style of Frank Zappa. They were one of the founding members of the Rock in Opposition (RIO) movement in the late 1970s. In 1979 they were Fred Frith's backing band on his solo album, Gravity (1980). Musically, they bore a resemblance to the Canterbury scene.
Univers Zero are an instrumental Belgian band formed in 1974 by drummer Daniel Denis. The band is known for its dark style of progressive rock, heavily influenced by 20th-century chamber music.
Romantic Warrior is a studio album by the American jazz fusion band Return to Forever, their first recorded for Columbia Records, after releasing their previous four albums on Polydor. In February 1976, the group retreated to Caribou Ranch near Nederland, Colorado to record. It was the first album to remove the "featuring Chick Corea" credit from beside the band name on the album cover. Despite the music being more dense and avant-garde than the funkier No Mystery, it remains the band's highest selling album with over 500,000 copies sold in the US alone.
Lars Gustav Gabriel Hollmer was a Swedish accordionist, keyboardist and composer, whose work drew on music ranging from Nordic folk tunes to progressive rock. He has been a member and/or founder of over half a dozen groups, most of whose work has been recorded at The Chickenhouse, his well outfitted home studio in his hometown of Uppsala. His work with the band Samla Mammas Manna, in the late 1960s and early 1970s and up to 2002, when the re-formed group played at the two-day ProgDay festival in North Carolina, was and is considered progressive rock. However, he is most centrally an empathetic and generous collaborator: whether as a member of Accordion Tribe, while working with the experimental guitarist Fred Frith, or while spending several months with Japanese jazz players, he seems to find a style that brings his partners to the fore while remaining identifiably himself. Though his work is little known in the United States, he won a Swedish Grammis award in 1999 for his record Andetag. He has also composed extensively for Swedish film, as well as for theatre and dance productions. Consistent elements of his music throughout his career included use of irregular time signatures, a daring sense of improvisation, and used complex polyrhythms.
White Zone is the nineteenth studio album by Hawkwind, released under the band name Psychedelic Warriors in 1995. The name change reflects that this was a musical departure for the band; being an ambient techno album rather than rock, the album is completely instrumental and there is little guitar featured.
The Hamsters were a British band from Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England.
Thinking Plague is an American avant-garde progressive rock group founded in 1982 by guitarist/composer Mike Johnson and bass guitarist/drummer Bob Drake. Based in Denver, Colorado, the band has been active off and on since 1982, taking on a number of musicians over the years. They have made seven studio albums between 1984 and 2017, and released one live album recorded at NEARfest in 2000.
Mike Johnson is an American experimental rock guitarist and composer, best known as the co-founder and member of the Denver-based avant-rock group Thinking Plague. He has also been a member of Hamster Theatre and The Science Group, and has collaborated with several musicians, including Bob Drake, Susanne Lewis and Janet Feder.
Hervé Richard, better known as Ferdinand Richard, is a French avant-rock bass guitarist and composer.
Progman Cometh Music Festivals were two Canterbury scene music concerts held at the Moore Theatre in Seattle, Washington, USA, in 2002 and 2003.
The Muffins were an American Maryland-based progressive rock/avant-jazz group. They were formed in Washington, DC in the early 1970s and recorded four albums before disbanding in 1981. In 1998 the group reformed and recorded a further five albums and a DVD. The Muffins played at Symphony Space on Broadway in NYC with Marion Brown in 1979, and also performed at a number of festivals, starting with the ZU Manifestival in New York City in 1978, The Villa Celimontana festival in Rome, Italy in 2000, two appearances at Progday in 2001 and 2002, NEARfest in 2005, and the "Rock in Opposition" festival in France in 2009. In 2010, the Muffins headlined at Progday, making a third appearance at this long running festival.
Romantic Warriors II: A Progressive Music Saga About Rock in Opposition is a 2012 feature-length documentary film about the Rock in Opposition movement of the late 1970s, the music genre it spawned, and the influence it has on experimental groups across the world. The film was written and directed by Adele Schmidt and José Zegarra Holder, and was released in the United States by Zeitgeist Media. It premiered in Washington, D.C., on September 28, 2012. The film was generally well received by critics, with a reviewer at AllMusic saying that it "covers all the points an aficionado could possibly want".
Got RIO? Romantic Warriors II: Special Features DVD is a 2013 documentary film and an addendum to the 2012 feature-length documentary Romantic Warriors II: A Progressive Music Saga About Rock in Opposition. The film was written and directed by Adele Schmidt and José Zegarra Holder, and was released in the United States by Zeitgeist Media. It was generally well received by critics, with a reviewer at AllMusic saying that it "is a showcase for tremendous musicianship and a must-have for existing [Rock in Opposition] fans".
Aranis are a Flemish acoustic avant-rock, experimental and neo-classical chamber music group led by composer and contrabass player Joris Vanvinckenroye. Their music has been described as a blend of "chamber classical and rock", "Chamber Music Rock", and "Belgian chamber rock" with elements of East and Southern European folk music. Aranis have recorded six albums, and have performed live at a number of European venues, including the Rock in Opposition festivals in Carmaux, France. They made their American concert debut at NEARfest Apocalypse at Zoellner Arts Center, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in June 2012.
Dave Willey is an American experimental musician and composer, best known as the co-founder and member of the Boulder, Colorado-based avant-rock group Hamster Theatre. He is also a member of Thinking Plague and 3 Mice. He has released two solo albums and has performed with Hamster Theatre and Thinking Plague in the United States and Europe.
Joris Vanvinckenroye, also known by his solo moniker BASta!, is a Flemish avant-rock and experimental double bass musician and composer. He is best known for Aranis, a neo-classical chamber rock group he founded and leads, and for his double bass solo project, BASta!.
The Public Execution of Mister Personality / Quasi Day Room: Live at the Moore Theatre is a 2006 double album by Boulder, Colorado-based avant-rock, experimental and folk jazz music group Hamster Theatre, led by Dave Willey. It was released in the United States by Cuneiform Records, and consists of a studio CD and a live CD, the latter recorded at the 2002 Progman Cometh Festival in Seattle, Washington.
Romantic Warriors III: Canterbury Tales (2015) is the third in a series of feature-length documentaries about Progressive rock written and directed by Adele Schmidt and José Zegarra Holder. This one focuses on the music of the Canterbury scene.
Angels on the Edge of Time is a 2015 collaborative live album of musical improvisations by Lindsay Cooper, Fred Frith, Gianni Gebbia and Lars Hollmer. It was recorded on 30 May 1992 at the AngelicA Festival Internazionale di Musica in Bologna, Italy, and released by I Dischi di Angelica in January 2015. This is the only album released by the quartet.
The Bruised Romantic Glee Club is the fifth solo album by English musician Jakko M. Jakszyk. it was his first release in 9 years since 1997s The Road to Ballina and first since the breakup of the 21st Century Schizoid Band, a band featuring former members of early lineups of the progressive rock band King Crimson. Jakszyk was the only member who previously hadn't been a member of the band though he did join the band when they reformed in 2013. Due to Jakszyk's membership of the Schizoid band, the album features members of the band.