Pat Thomas | |
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 Pat Thomas in 2017 at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle | |
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Patrick O'Hearn Thomas |
| Also known as | Patrick O'Hearn |
| Born | April 6, 1964 |
| Genres |
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| Occupation(s) |
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| Instrument(s) | Drums |
| Years active | 1980s-present |
| Labels | Heyday, Water, Omnivore, Innerstate |
Pat Thomas is a San Francisco-based musician, music journalist and compiler of music reissues.
Thomas was the founder in 1988 of Heyday Records. He later moved on to Water Records, and currently compiles reissues at Omnivore Recordings.
Heyday Records leveraged the commercial success of Paisley Underground bands as a springboard for new artists who captured the flavor of the 1960s American and British folk scene, particularly local San Francisco artists such as Barbara Manning. [1] Thomas also made pilgrimages to England, tracking down musical artists of the 1960s such as the Incredible String Band, Pentangle, Fairport Convention, Shirley Collins, Davey Graham, and Wizz Jones, before most had any of their music reissued on CD. While living in Germany for two years in the early 1990s, Thomas also promoted artists for Heyday and other labels. [1]
His credits as a compiler of reissue recordings also include albums by Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield, Television, [2] and for Omnivore, artists such as Game Theory.
Thomas is the author of the book Listen, Whitey: The Sights and Sounds of Black Power, a 2012 work of African-American cultural history centering on the Black Panther Party, [3] [4] with a concurrently released CD and double LP recording of speeches and protest songs. [5] He is also the author of books on Jerry Rubin and Allen Ginsberg. [6]
He is also known for his work as a music critic. He has written for Bucketfull of Brains, The Bob, Juxtapoz, Crawdaddy and Mojo and was editor of the last issue of Ptolemaic Terrascope . [1]
As a musician, Thomas has been drummer and percussionist for bands such as Absolute Grey, and presently for the musicians' collective Mushroom, which he founded.
From 1987 to 1997, Thomas released five solo records. He has also recorded as Patrick O'Hearn. [7]
Thomas founded Mushroom in the San Francisco Bay Area, in November 1996. The group's sound has been described as a "diverse and eclectic blend of jazz, space rock, R&B, electronic, ambient, Krautrock and folk music". [8]
Mushroom released its first recording in 1997, a 12" single called "The Reeperbahn," described by critic Fred Mills in Magnet as a recording that "could fool a blindfolded test applicant into thinking its 25-minute psych blowout was some long lost Krautrock epic from the early '70s. Let the band's wah-wah guitar, feedback violin, volcanic bass, jazzbo percussion, and tape loops take you down the fabled motorway, never to return to the place you once knew." [7] "The Reeperbahn" provided the basis for CDs released in 1998 in the Netherlands and Germany. [7]
In 1999, the band released Analog Hi-Fi Surprise in the United States and Germany, followed by a European tour, by which time keyboard player Graham Connah had exited and was replaced by Michael Holt. [7] Toronto music magazine Exclaim! wrote that the band "dish out the tastiest psychedelic funk you're ever likely to encounter. The groove's the thang as these tasty tracks cruise on Rhodes-driven jazz, ambient beats, surf riffs, and post rock textures. The band brew all these elements into a mixture that travels the outer realms of progressive funk. Like Tortoise jamming with the Grateful Dead or Soft Machine exploring the Funkadelic catalog, these loose open-ended excursions raise the art of fusion to a new plateau. While each track works a groove toward heady epiphany, the album as a whole refuses to stay locked into any one genre. Booker T-styled organ gyrations, rock guitar virtuosity, Bootsy Collins funk ups, ambient jazz, electronic beats, and Krautrock trance all make a stand, but the bottom line is that this is music that will move you, and then some." [9]
The band then recorded Foxy Music (2001), which included trumpeter Jon Birdsong (known for his work with Beck). Q magazine in England wrote, "On the Foxy Music CD, the band steer away from determined psychedelia in favor of a friendly looseness to their playing. Jabs of electro-trombone and flute cluster alongside churning organ and splintered Rhodes Piano. Beck's trumpeter Jon Birdsong also turns on a great big blubbery blast of tuba, while musical director Patrick O'Hearn's clattering drums have an automaton rotary action that sometimes recalls Can's Jaki Liebezeit."
As of 2015, the members of Mushroom were Thomas (congas, bongos, drum kit), Ned Doherty (bass), Erik Pearson (flute, violin, effects, acoustic and electric guitar, electric sitar), Dave Brandt (congas, bongos, vibes, djembe, gongs), Josh Pollock (acoustic guitar, vocals, megaphone electronics), Alison Levy (vocals), Ralph Carney (woodwinds/horns), Graham Connah (keyboards), Matt Cunitz (keyboards), Tim Plowman (guitar), Dan Olmsted (guitar), and Dave Mihaly (vibes, percussion). [10] Mushroom's current label is 4 Zero Records. [11]
Klaus Schulze was a German electronic music pioneer, composer and musician. He also used the alias Richard Wahnfried and was a member of the Krautrock bands Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel, and the Cosmic Jokers before launching a solo career consisting of more than 60 albums released across six decades.
Can were a German experimental rock band formed in Cologne in 1968 by Holger Czukay, Irmin Schmidt (keyboards), Michael Karoli (guitar), and Jaki Liebezeit (drums). The group featured several vocalists, including the American Malcolm Mooney (1968–70) and the Japanese Damo Suzuki (1970–73). They have been widely hailed as pioneers of the German krautrock scene.
Nurse with Wound is the main recording name for British musician Steven Stapleton. Nurse with Wound was originally a band, formed in 1978 by Stapleton, John Fothergill and Heman Pathak. The band's work has explored genres such as industrial, noise, dark ambient, and drone.
Mouse on Mars is a German electronic music duo formed in 1993 by Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma. Their music is a blend of electronic genres including IDM, dub, krautrock, breakbeat and ambient, featuring heavy use of organic analog synth and cross-frequency modulation. Their music also features live instrumentation including strings, horns, drums, bass, and guitar.
Black Tape for a Blue Girl is an American dark wave band formed in 1986 by keyboardist/songwriter Sam Rosenthal, the founder of Projekt Records.
Neu! were a West German krautrock band formed in Düsseldorf in 1971 by Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother following their departure from Kraftwerk. The group's albums were produced by Conny Plank, who has been regarded as the group's "hidden member". They released three albums in their initial incarnation—Neu! (1972), Neu! 2 (1973), and Neu! 75 (1975)—before disbanding in 1975. They briefly reunited in the mid-1980s.
Neu! 75 is the third studio album by the krautrock band Neu!. It was recorded and mixed at Conny Plank's studio between December 1974 and January 1975. It was released in 1975 by Brain Records, and officially reissued on CD on 29 May 2001 by Astralwerks in the US and by Grönland Records in the UK.
Cluster were a German musical duo consisting of Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius, formed in 1971 and associated with West Germany's krautrock and kosmische music scenes. Born from the earlier Berlin-based group Kluster, they relocated in 1971 into the countryside village of Forst, Lower Saxony, where they built a studio and collaborated with musicians such as Conny Plank, Brian Eno, and Michael Rother; with the latter, they formed the influential side-project Harmonia. After first disbanding in 1981, Cluster reunited several times: from 1989 to 1997, and from 2007 to 2010.
Harmonia was a West German musical "supergroup" formed in 1973 as a collaboration between members of two prominent krautrock bands: Cluster's Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius joined by Neu! guitarist Michael Rother. Living and recording in the rural village of Forst, the trio released two albums—Musik von Harmonia (1974) and Deluxe (1975)—to limited sales before dissolving in 1976. AllMusic described the group as "one of the most legendary in the entire krautrock/kosmische scene."
Zeit is the third studio album by German electronic music group Tangerine Dream. A double LP, it was released in August 1972, being the first release featuring Peter Baumann, who joined then-current members Christopher Franke and Edgar Froese. Zeit is subtitled Largo in Four Movements.
No-Man are an English art pop duo, formed in 1987 as No Man Is an Island (Except the Isle of Man) by singer Tim Bowness and multi-instrumentalist Steven Wilson. The band has so far produced seven studio albums and a number of singles/outtakes collections (most notably, 2006's career retrospective, All the Blue Changes). The band was once lauded as "conceivably the most important English group since The Smiths" by Melody Maker music newspaper, and a 2017 article of Drowned in Sound described them as "probably the most underrated band of the last 25 years".
Tago Mago is the second studio album by the German krautrock band Can, originally released as a double LP in August 1971 on the United Artists label. It was the band's first full studio album to feature Damo Suzuki after the 1970 departure of previous vocalist Malcolm Mooney, though Suzuki had been featured on most tracks on the compilation album Soundtracks the prior year. Recorded at Schloss Nörvenich, a medieval castle near Cologne, the album features long-form experimental tracks blending rock and jazz improvisation, funk rhythms, and musique concrète tape editing techniques.
Neu! '72 Live! in Düsseldorf is the final entirely new album released to date by krautrock band Neu!.
Sowiesoso is the fourth studio album by German electronic music band Cluster, released in 1976. It was Cluster's first release for Sky Records. Sowiesoso was recorded in just two days in Forst, Germany in 1976 and mixed at Conny's Studio in Wolperath.
Musik von Harmonia is the debut album from the influential German krautrock group Harmonia, released in January 1974 by Brain Records. Formed by the addition of Neu! guitarist Michael Rother to Cluster, they recorded the album from June to November 1973 in Cluster's Forst recording studio. It was self-produced by the group using a primitive mixer and three tape recorders.
Todd Cochran is an American pianist, composer, keyboardist, essayist and conceptual artist. Early in his career he was also professionally known as Bayeté. Cochran started his career as a teenager with saxophonist John Handy. Two years later he joined vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson’s Quartet, and made his jazz recording debut composing and performing on a benchmark album for Hutcherson, "Head On" that featured a nineteen-piece ensemble. The recording was critically hailed as cross-pollinating the evolving contemporary modal jazz, avant-garde sound of the 1970s. Cochran’s first solo project "Worlds Around the Sun" became a #1 jazz album and marked his entree into the jazz discussion. From the mid 1970s forward Todd has experimented with and incorporated synthesizers, electronic and mixed-media concepts in his creative projects while collaborating with a wide range of artists in the genres of jazz, art rock, pop, R&B, and twenty-first-century classical.
Mushroom is a musicians' collective based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The group's sound has been described as a "diverse and eclectic blend of jazz, space rock, R&B, electronic, ambient, Krautrock and folk music".
1/2 Gentlemen/Not Beasts is the debut album by American rock band Half Japanese. Originally released in 1980 by Armageddon Records as a triple record, it was re-released in 1992 on CD on T.E.C. Tones with additional material. Fire Records reissued it again in 2013 on three-CD and four-LP sets on Record Store Day 2013 with further additional material, limited to 1,000 copies in each format.
Bureau B is an independent record label, music publisher and booking agency from Hamburg, Germany, founded in 2005 by Gunther Buskies as a sister label to Tapete Records. The label releases varieties of electronic, free-spirited music, with the spectrum ranging from pop to avant-garde. The label has amassed an extensive catalogue of reissues and new productions, including classics from the genre of electronic music in the 1970s and early 1980s popularly classified as Krautrock, alongside new recordings by such formative artists as Faust, Kreidler, Roedelius, Tietchens, Moebius.
Psychedelic funk is a music genre that combines funk music with elements of psychedelic rock. It was pioneered in the late 1960s and early 1970s by American acts like Sly and the Family Stone, Jimi Hendrix, and the Parliament-Funkadelic collective. It would influence subsequent styles including '70s jazz fusion and the '90s West Coast hip hop style G-funk.
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