- blend.io/thegrassyknoll
- Austin, TX
- 0 projects
In the late 1990s, The Grassy Knoll was on the leading edge of a new kind of music, a darkly artful mix of the electric and the organic, of digital sampling and analog virtuosity. It was the sound of rock, jazz and electronica melded into a sometimes sly, sometimes seething and always forward-minded infusion. Salon dubbed The Grassy Knoll’s music “groundbreaking and futuristic,” while CMJ deemed i ...
In the late 1990s, The Grassy Knoll was on the leading edge of a new kind of music, a darkly artful mix of the electric and the organic, of digital sampling and analog virtuosity. It was the sound of rock, jazz and electronica melded into a sometimes sly, sometimes seething and always forward-minded infusion. Salon dubbed The Grassy Knoll’s music “groundbreaking and futuristic,” while CMJ deemed it “radical.” Billboard magazine went further, describing those early albums on Nettwerk and Antilles/Verve thusly: “A soundtrack for the conspiracy theory in your mind, The Grassy Knoll fuses the technical terrorism of the Bomb Squad with the organic impact of Miles Davis’ Jack Johnson – industrial-strength beats vying with serpentine sax solos, ambient-noir atmospheres cloaking coiled aggression... Cut-and-paste style, it effectively blurs the line between Birdland and clubland.” The discs featured such edgy instrumental stars as Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth and avant-jazz saxophonist Ellery Eskelin. And tastemakers from Shirley Manson of Garbage to guitarist Vernon Reid of Living Colour among the faithful listeners singing the praises of albums The Grassy Knoll (1994), Positive (1996) and III (1998), as well as new-century addendum Short Stories (2003). Aside from an occasional remix and soundtrack inclusion, The Grassy Knoll went dormant for the decade after that, as life challenges took precedence. But now The Grassy Knoll – a/k/a multi-instrumentalist and producer Nolan “Bob” Green – returns with a new album brimming with a sense of fresh possibilities: Electric Verdeland, Vol. 1.
Electric Verdeland, Vol. 1 features the same combustible sonic mix that so beguiled the cognoscenti near the turn of the millennium: the vintage hard-rock samples, the flesh-and-blood solos, the dark-hued rhythmic atmosphere, the ever-grooving pulse. Along with the Austin, TX-based Green on bass guitar and various other tools, the album’s instrumentalists come from far-flung genres and geography, including guitarist Vernon Reid, trumpeter Chris Grady and keyboardist Dave Depper, as well as such Austin luminaries as Brad Houser on baritone saxophone and bass clarinet, Jesse Dayton on guitar, Chris Forshage on trumpet, Brian Batch on violin and Jeff Johnston on musical saw. Also, for the first time on a record by The Grassy Knoll, there are featured vocalists: Jon Dee Graham (the only three-time inductee to the Austin Music Hall of Fame), Adam Sultan of Poi Dog Pondering, Ann Courtney of Mother Feather, Francine Thirteen, Laura Scarborough and James Rotondi of Roto’s Magic Act.
The starry guest array attests to the resonance of The Grassy Knoll’s music over the years. Vernon Reid – ranked No. 66 on the Rolling Stone list of Top 100 Guitarists of All Time – contributes very electric six-string to three tracks on Electric Verdeland, Vol. 1. He says: “The Grassy Knoll was in a group of artists that helped define the ’90s music scene outside of hard rock, metal and grunge. The Grassy Knoll, with its quirky, off-kilter, breakbeat funk, was of a piece with the roots of trip-hop, like Portishead, MC 900-Foot Jesus, The Goats, My Bloody Valentine. To me, Nolan Green is a genre-twisting, outside-the-corral genius.”
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