Album Notes

Juxtapose is a Seattle-area rock band that plays quirky and intense JungleJazz/Funk. The Rocket raved that their songs "will have you singing to yourself at moments when you really wish you could concentrate on your task at hand."

After contributing a song to the Northwest Music Award nominated compilation CD Bread Alone Project: Volume One, and performing regularly throughout the greater Puget Sound region at numerous clubs, festivals, and fairs from 1998 through 2000, the band spent the first half of 2001 recording their first full length CD Cartoonland, released October 2001.

Cartoonland includes fan favorite songs, such as "21st Century" and the title track, along with 12 other tracks of groove induced portraits. To promote the CD, Juxtapose is adding to their normal performing schedule a self produced performance series called the Juxtaposium. It's a concert. It's an art show. It's a play. It's an opportunity to explore the many aspects of Cartoonland from the serious to the silly to the sublime.

When Juxtapose is on stage, their music combines influences that range from Ben Folds Five to Pink Floyd to Oingo Boingo with splashes of world rhythms. KSER radio personality, Dawg, saw them and raved, "Juxtapose rocks with madness! The onstage communication between the Juxtapose boys is brilliant to behold... the drums, the laughter..."

Each member of Juxtapose brings his own style to the mix. Brad Barton, visually impaired since childhood, combines a jazz sensibility with a percussive finger technique to create thick soundscapes on his piano.

Brad's younger brother, Phil Barton, plays bass with a manic intensity tempered by a McCartney-esque sense of melody.

Jim Peppan, lead singer, arranges the music in a way that Gods of Music, an Internet music 'zine, enthusiastically wrote, "With (an) amazing use of pop sensibilities in a very nonstandard pop songwriting method, you never know where the song is going to go next. It really kept me listening."

The kit drummer, Mitch Harbaugh, unapologetically pounds out a rhythmic scaffolding from which the music builds. And all four members share an expert ability with hand percussion including congas, djembes, and doumbeks. In any particular song you could see one, two, or all four break into a drum jam.

Juxtapose's new CD, Cartoonland, continues the tradition of their live shows, taking the listener where the meaningful and the meaningless sit side by side drinking milkshakes.