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CD/DVD Releases: Outer Worlds - Live CD From Kurt Michaels Set For Release On Umbrello

Posted on Sunday, April 15 @ 20:26:07 UTC by nightowl

"[Music] is a force of nature - and if you are a musician, you are compelled to serve it." This concept is the one behind guitarist Kurt Michaels' "music by accident" philosophy. That sort of approach is certainly best captured in the live performance, so it is fitting that Michaels' Outer Worlds (his Umbrello Records debut) is a live disc.

Discovering music during his childhood, the die was cast fpr Michaels to become a musician when the Beatles came to the United States. After thirty-five years in the business he can boast sharing the stage with the likes of Woldman Jack, Badfinger, Bobby Vinton, the Marvelletes, and the Chiffons. In 2004 all his experiences culminated in the independent release of Inner Worlds, Part One. That disc, described as "Olias of Sunhillow meets The Prisoner," earned rave reviews and got him names as U-Magazine's 2004 Ambient Artist of the Year.



Outer Worlds is compiled from archives of shows performed between 2004 and 2006. The live nature in itself makes it a change from its predecessor. It serves both as a new way of looking at Michaels' musical vision and a continuation of the foundations that the debut established.

Michaels explained the process of creating the live music this way, "It took me a year to figure out how to approach a live performance in the spirit of Inner Worlds. Since I didn't have the desire to recreate art I'd already done, I decided to take the opposite approach, and use live performances as an opportunity to let people experience me creating new music. In other words, the shows are completely improvised--something very common amongst ambient/electronic musicians."

He continued by saying that, "rather than simply interact with myself [Inner Worlds was purely solo], I usually involve one other musician (a keyboardist), mostly Jim Gully, (although performances by John Melnick and Michael Cosentino are also featured on Outer Worlds). These excursions are not for everyone, but for me it was the most natural way to approach a live performance in the spirit of Inner Worlds. A lot of the music I immersed myself in while growing up, emphasized improvisation, particularly in live settings (Hendrix, Cream, Mahavishnu, Chick Corea, Miles Davis etc), so really this was a trip down a road I was already quite familiar with."

Outer Worlds is set to be released globally on April 24th. Live audiences have gotten to experience Michaels' "fourth dimensional" playing first hand. Now the rest of the world can, too.

Posted in Album Release News