Album Notes

Guardian Ear: The soundtrack to your inner cinema.

A five piece acoustic quintet from Seattle, WA, Guardian Ear has an unusual combination of guitar, cello, oboe, and two percussionists. They blend the primitivism of tribal percussion with the art of classical composition to create an utterly unique sound world that has been called "avant acoustic chamber rock" and "thrashical", blurring all boundaries between low art, high art, world and rock.

This effect was no accident either. These sadistic bastards openly flaunt their irreverence for convention, custom, expectations and beauty with every last scratched-out note. The oboe (...they have an oboe!) flows gracefully over an undulating rhythm section, trying, painfully, to paint something smooth and sweet, while its nemesis, a custom 5-string cello relentlessly beats every last melody into cowering, pathetic squeeks and fragmented, gasping syllables. The resulting "pieces" are often simultaneously bitter-sweet, confusing, pretty and ridiculous.

It's hard to pin down any large influence over the music, with each member coming from accomplished yet entirely separate backgrounds, which seem to overlap in the strangest places. Was that a hint of death metal? Was that a cock-rock solo played on a woodwind? Did they all just grunt in unison? What did he just break? This band may not be for the faint of heart or easily frustrated, but they seem to be doing what was previously thought of as a passé experiment: exploring new realms of music, new concoctions of sounds and genres, and coming out with something legitimately original.