I\'m A Badass Caption: I can haz links, style or anything that is valid markup :)

CD/DVD Releases: Djam Karet - New 25th Anniversary Tour! Plus, New Fernwood Release

Posted on Monday, August 03 @ 01:30:00 UTC by nightowl

Djam Karet plays 3 LIVE GIGS this summer!! For the first time in 7 years, Djam Karet will be performing live! Come see the group that Electronic Musician Magazine called "The greatest undiscovered band in the world." They will be playing music from many of the 14 CDs they've recorded, throughout their 25-year career together, most of which has never been performed live before. Each show will feature over 2 hours of music.

The first show is at The Hip Kitty, a nice jazz bar in Claremont, CA. It will feature Djam Karet and our electronic music side-group Ukab Maerd. The Hip Kitty, Thursday, August 6th, 8:00pm, 2009: Featuring music by Djam Karet and Ukab Maerd. They have a full service bar and fondue lounge. Price: 2-drink minimum.



Djam Karet will be headlining this year's Crescendo Festival. The Crescendo Festival, Saturday, August 22nd, 9:30pm, 2009: Featuring music by Djam Karet and 8 other groups. This is a three-day Progressive Rock festival held for the past 10 years on the beach of the beautiful west coast of France. Price: FREE

The Immersion Festival: Saturday, October 17, 5:00pm, 2009: at the DA Gallery: Featuring music by Djam Karet, and world famous electronic musician (and contributor to some of Djam Karet's CDs) Steve Roach will also be performing his amazing music. There will also be a bunch of other electronic musicians performing their own music there as well, and more information about them will be available soon. The Immersion Festival/DA Gallery has a bar, and numerous restaurants are located nearby. Price: $10.00

For more information, please contact us at: gayle (at) djamkaret.com

New Fernwood album Sangita: Available for $11.99 at www.DjamKaret.com and www.CDBaby/cd/Fernwood2

Following on the heels of their widely heralded debut release Almeria, this 12-track offering greatly expands upon their previous work. Utilizing an expanded palette of world instruments, Gayle Ellett (Djam Karet) and Todd Montgomery create music that is both familiar and exotic, lush and melodic, warm and inspirational. They create contemporary acoustic music that is beautiful and elegant, with a strong cinematic and pan-cultural feel. By playing traditional World instruments in new and interesting ways, they have created a new hybrid style that is uniquely their own. And it is these qualities that make the music of Fernwood the perfect antidote for our modern, stress-filled lives.

On Sangita, the group combines many apparently disparate concepts into a unified whole. They've tried to infuse the music with many seemingly diverse qualities such as: traditional and modern, Americana and world, familiar and exotic, simple and complex, rural and urban, etc, and they've succeeded at this very difficult task. And although the music sometimes has a frail and delicate sound, at other times it is extremely rich and dense, with as many as 50 instruments being used in a single composition, giving Sangita an almost orchestral sound. There is also no compression or other digital effects or manipulations used on the recording (except for reverb) so Sangita has a very fresh, lively and organic sound.

Frail and haunting, beautiful and dreamy, the music of composer team Gayle Ellett and Todd Montgomery has a unique, yet familiar feel. Both of them have each been composing and performing music professionally for many decades. Working under the name Fernwood they have released two albums so far: Almeria and Sangita. Their cinematic music blends the beautiful sounds of Greek & Irish bouzouki, sitar, dilruba, acoustic guitar, Chinese ruan, Turkish cumbus, Moroccan oud, mandolin, harmonium, gimbri, tenor banjo, rababa, bulbul tarang, jal tarang, dotara, swarmandal, tambura, gopichand, violin, rhodes piano and upright bass. All of these exotic tones are used like paint, to create dramatic visions of beauty.

Guitar Player Magazine said: "Fernwood is the brainchild of multi-instrumentalists Todd Montgomery and Gayle Ellett. The two have scored numerous film soundtracks both together and individually, and it shows. The songs are wonderfully melodic and emotionally direct, the diverse instruments are expertly layered, and dynamics are an essential aspect of the orchestrations. Acoustic stringed instruments constructed of wood predominate, and timbre and sonority suggest place and idiom as strongly as the actual compositional structures. Middle Eastern, Asian, African, and European motifs are masterfully interwoven with Americana to form a luscious yet rootsy imaginary idiom that is intriguing, uplifting, and at once familiar and exotic."

[Source: Djam Karet]

Posted in Album Release News

Associated Topics

Band News (tours, comings/goings, etc)