Hamster Theatre

The Boulder, Colorado-based Hamster Theatre were founded in 1993, emerging from your music imagination of Dave Willey, an American accordionist/composer skilled in a multitude of instruments who had lived for a while in European countries and found himself drawn to the music of Lars Hollmer, Nimal, and similar Rock and roll in Opposition-related artists who blend components of rock, Western folk, avant-garde experimentation, and contemporary composition. Time for the Says, he documented and released a single cassette entitled Tunes from your Hamster Theater (reissued on Compact disc from the Prolific label in 1995), as well as the Hamster Theater saga was underway. In 1993, like-minded multi-instrumentalist Jon Stubbs became a member of with Willey as co-leader of the brand new music group named Hamster Theater, formed to try out Willey’s compositions live. Hamster Theater featured Willey mainly on keyboards, electric guitar, and melodeon and Stubbs on bass — the group would discover itself perennially challenged to discover a bassist who stick around lengthy — with a range of extra music artists on keyboards, sax, flute, and drums. Furthermore to Willey and Stubbs, the very first version from the music group presented Deborah Perry (whom Willey experienced first fulfilled in 1985 and collaborated with in a Thankful Dead cover music group) on keyboards, guitarist Steve Doyle, reedman/flutist Greg LaLiberte, drummer Josh Wright (the child of saxophonist Jack port Wright), and percussionist Jay Trolinger; Hamster Theatre’s second incarnation presented Willey (right now on accordion and acoustic guitar), Stubbs (right now playing trombone furthermore to bass), Perry, LaLiberte, and drummer Tag McCoin (who also performed in retro origins rock clothing the Denver Gentlemen, a music group that also included Willey and Stubbs). Early variations from the Hamsters gigged around Colorado pubs and coffeehouses, but apart from Willey and Stubbs, the very first two lineups eventually wouldn’t normally last. By 1996 Willey (as bassist) and Perry (as vocalist) experienced became a member of the Denver-based avant-prog music group Considering Plague, which also included guitarist Mike Johnson and reed participant Tag Harris. That 12 months Willey and Stubbs recruited Johnson and Harris to become listed on another live release of Hamster Theater along with beginners Mike Fitzmaurice on bass and Raoul Rossiter on drums. This sextet lineup of Hamster Theater documented the live Compact disc Siege on Hamburger Town at Denver’s Mercury Café in 1998. The group following undertook its most ambitious task up to now, the Carnival Detournement recording released from the Cuneiform label in 2001. The recording was documented in Colorado with Willey and Stubbs on a variety of devices; support from additional musicians previous and present from your Hamsters’ live groupings (Harris, Johnson, Fitzmaurice, Rossiter, LaLiberte, and McCoin); and extra contributions from visitor artists. Considering Plague co-founder Bob Drake blended the record at his Studio room Midi Pyrennes in France. Although in the Hamster Theater website misgivings are portrayed from Willey and Stubbs about their decision “to wreck havoc on Bob’s master, considerably squashing the sonic palette he previously made,” Carnival Detournement was non-etheless released to significant critical acclaim because of its melodic, atmospheric, moody, and unstable blend of contemporary classical, avant rock and roll, and Western european folk affects. (The misgivings of Willey and Stubbs had been redressed by this year’s 2009 Collectors Model reissue of Carnival Detournement, which restored the saving to its Bob Drake-mastered type.) In August of 2002, Hamster Theater were invited to execute at Seattle’s Progman Cometh celebration held at that city’s Moore Theater — the function featured several Canterbury picture headliners but by way of a amount of accounts the Hamsters (we.e., edition 3.0 however now featuring bassist Brian McDougall as an alternative for Fitzmaurice) nearly stole the present. For those struggling to go to the celebration, the band’s functionality was included on the next disc of the general public Execution of Mister Character/Quasi Day Area two-CD place released by Cuneiform in-may 2006. Mister Character/Quasi Day Space also included a studio room disc featuring fresh compositions primarily by Willey and Stubbs, some created for contemporary dance and media shows. The live and studio room discs had been both combined and perfected by Drake, which period Willey and Stubbs involved in no sonic squashing. In the mean time, bassists have continuing to enter and leave through Hamster Theatre’s revolving door. Between your Hamsters’ Progman Cometh overall performance and the documenting from the Mister Character studio songs, McDougall departed the music group and was changed by Matt Spencer. Nevertheless, Spencer shows up on only 1 piece within the Compact disc, Mike Johnson’s mini-opus “Oye Comatose,” and Willey deals with the bass responsibilities everywhere else. Since that time, Spencer provides departed the music group (apparently for California); he was a minimum of momentarily changed by just one more bassist, Eric Thorin, who taken care of the low records through the Hamsters’ appearance at North Carolina’s ProgDay celebration in Sept 2006. Using the first decade from the 2000s arriving at an in depth, Hamster Theater remained a dynamic device, conjuring up beauty, magic, secret, unpredictability, and manic energy and laughter in occasional live show, although without the brand-new rodent recordings because of their fans to consider for the spin. In to the 21st hundred years, the band’s concert events featured another bassist, John Grigsby, known not merely for his skill within the instrument also for his rather incredible function in another creative effort — experimental computer animation using a selection of media, like the Etch A Sketch.