Patrick Grant Gives Avant-Garde a Front-Row Seat with ‘Fields Amaze’

By SHARON JENNINGS

The more we listen to Patrick Grant, the more we understand where his inspiration comes from.

Like many musicians, Grant draws upon his experiences, but with Fields Amaze and Other Strange Music, Grant weaves sounds from every day life into the aural experience.

There is tremendous and diverse range of emotion built into this album.

Some of the music on the Detroit-born composer’s new album Fields Amaze and Other Strange Music sounds quite industrial. Hammer-on-metal kind of cold and methodic and march-step rythm, as it is on “Everything Distinct Everything The Same.” Then in the same collection, the listener comes to a work like “A Visible Track of Turbulence II,” which we can only assume filled the writer’s need to create an orchestrated avant-garde piece of sonic conversation.

Grant is missing his calling. These are pieces that can and should be the background for some of our most popular films and TV shows. There is nothing commercial here, rather the arrangement of the unusual sounds tell stories.

“Imaginary Horror Film,” for instance, is a cool back and forth that culminates in what sounds like an upbeat conclusion, then it takes a jagged and exciting turn down a blind alley before cutting you loose to wonder what exactly just happened. And just on the verge of freedom, were we deceived only to fall down an open manhole in New York City?

Grant says: “Fields Amaze and Other Strange Music is music created for percussion, gamelan, microtonal instruments, and electric chamber ensembles with narrative structures informed by chaos theory, biological forms, and B-horror films. Really.”

That seems to be an accurate statement in that the work can adapt and is fluid in linear and non-linear media. His previous albums, A Sequence of Waves and Tilted Axes evoke similar responses, but Grant has taken these two previous collections and pushed the envelope with Fields Amaze.

 

The album represents a first for lovers — and purchasers — of music. There is no music-by-the-numbers marketing plan out for this release. That’s probably because even if it were the days when people actually bought music, there would be no “genre” classification for Grant’s work.

Fields Amaze and Other Strange Music
Credits:

Patrick Grant: piano, keyboards, electric guitars, gamelan, percussion
John Ferrari: drums & percussion
Kathleen Supove & Marija Ilic: keyboards
Barbara Benary: additional gamelan
David Simons: Balinese percussion & theremin
Keith Bonner: flute
Thomas P. Oberle: clarinet
Darryl Gregory: trombone
Martha Mooke: viola
Maxine Neumann: cello
Mark Steven Brooks: electric bass
Alexandra Montano: vocalise
Lisa Karrer: lead vocal on If One Should Happen to Fall

All 2018 production, overdubs, revisions, and new stems recorded at Peppergreen Media, NYC and The Ferrari Factory, NJ. Mixed at Mercy Sound Studios, NYC – Garry Rindfuss: mixing engineer – Sheldon Steiger: album mastering – Patrick Grant: producer

Cover photo Cuming Co. Supercell, June 14, 2013 taken by Dave Rebot and used with permission. Flowchart graphic by Peppergreen Media. Album artwork, layout, and design by Eric Iverson. Peppergreen Media logo by Steve Ball. CD image collage inspired by Elément bleu XII, 1967 by Jean Dubuffet, photo credit: sTRANGE Music archive.