Album Notes

Ken Rubenstein is a self taught guitarist and composer originally from New Jersey, now living in Portland, Oregon.

In the past, Ken has received praise from such publications as Guitar Player Magazine. In fact, he was the last and perhaps most controversial International Soundpage Winner for Guitar Player Magazine, featured in the October '91 issue. He was the recipient of the prestigious New Jersey Council on the Arts Composer's Fellowship in 1995 and has been a Composer in Residence for the internationally acclaimed and highly competitive New Dramatists Composer-Librettist Workshop in New York City.

RECENT REVIEWS:

Guitar Player Magazine
101 Forgotten Greats & Unsung Heroes
February, 2007

A startlingly original guitarist, guitar synthesist, and composer, Rubenstein inhabits a musical multi-verse of exceptional complexity and beauty. Sporting a customized Carvin fitted with a Roland GK-2A pickup for driving an array of hardware synths—as well as a Wechter acoustic played through, among many other things, a Boss PS-5 Super Shifter pedal for pitch-bend effects—Rubenstein makes playing a 21-beat phrase over a 17/8 arpeggio sound perfectly natural. Experience this on 2005’s Invert and Transcend. —BC

Ground & Sky
Matt P. :

There are plenty of downsides to being an unsigned artist toiling in obscurity, but one positive is that you don't have to answer to anyone, and you can use the opportunity to record whatever and whenever you please. Guitarist Ken Rubenstein does just that with his superlative 2005 release, Invert and Transcend. Rubenstein — currently a math professor by day — composed and perfected the pieces recorded on this album over the course of several years. The music features Rubenstein's guitars (mostly acoustic and undistorted electric), but he also plays the bass and synthesizer parts and engages in creative use of tape loops and other methods of sound manipulation. He's accompanied by Charlie Zeleny on drums and Ed Broms adds some occasional Hammond B-3. The tracks are mostly instrumental, with some vocals contributed by Wendy Parker.
Invert and Transcend reveals Rubenstein as having excellent chops as well as superior compositional skills and a real talent for production. Most of the songs are very complex, featuring unconventional meters and a layering of sounds that reveals a rich, sophisticated harmonic language. At times Rubenstein uses non-western scales, which gives a few of the songs an ambiguously middle-eastern air. Despite all this, though, Rubenstein's compositional prowess ensures that his strategies never sound forced. His production skills result in what is often the work of just one or two people sounding like a larger ensemble playing in real time; in fact, the quality of the production and engineering on this album is almost unbelievable, considering that it is a home-made effort.

The music is cerebral, diverse and difficult to describe, although if you're a fan of experimental Canterbury/RIO stuff then you'll have nothing to fear. Those who aren't may nevertheless find Invert and Transcend to be enjoyable because there are plenty of hooks in these songs — they may just take awhile to sink in. True, the songs aren't "catchy" in the usual sense of the word, but there are many passages that could become quite hummable if given the chance to work their way into your head.

Invert and Transcend's only real weakness (in my opinion, anyway) is that it feels a bit more like a collection of projects — a musical resume, as it were — than a single, fully-realized entity. That's not a huge complaint, though, and I would encourage anyone who has a taste for progressive music that actually progresses to try this album for themselves. Personally, I'm very interested in hearing what Rubenstein does next.

Progressiveworld.net
Reviewed by: Duncan N Glenday, April 2006 :

In 2005 I wrote a very favorable review of the debut album by Fritz Doddy. That quirky album remains one of my favorites to this day, and featured in the top 5 of my best-of-2005 list.

Ken Rubenstein's music isn't similar to Doddy's, but those two artists must have emanated from the same gene pool. Many elements of their music is similar, but where Doddy's The Feeling Of Far was fairly approachable, Invert And Transcend is an idiosyncratic form of acoustic avant garde music that will have you scratching your head and saying "I dunno what the hell that was, but damn, it's cool!"

Invert And Transcend is principally a guitar-led piece, but don't worry - it isn't just another guitar album. There are sampled inserts, there are synths, there are gorgeous vocal lines from soprano Wendy Parker, there are sections driven by unconventional bass lines, there's imaginative drumming that is sensibly restrained in the mix, and there's a lot of imagination. Multiple guitars and loops run simultaneously - sometimes beautifully synchronized, and sometimes - like in the "You're All Whores" trilogy, where they're oddly chaotic - yet in their dissonance and disharmony they work together to yield a challenging but rewarding experience. None of the 10 songs are the same, and you'll hear 43 short minutes of experimental, fiercely individualistic, off-the-wall-eclectic music. Every bar rebels against convention in a way that is at once serious and - with its uplifting, energetic tones - a whole lot of fun.

As I once said about Fritz Doddy - this music sounds like a sequence of happy accidents that just happen to work together, and were casually thrown onto a CD for the hell of it. In fact - this project took ten years to complete, and on closer inspection, the attention to detail becomes clear - and Rubenstein will be the first to tell you that you really have to work at sounding spontaneous. Ken Rubenstein received a New Jersey Council on the Arts Composer's Fellowship in 1995, he was composer in Residence for the New Dramatists Composer-Librettist Workshop in New York City, and as a math professor in Oregon he sometimes challenges his students to fret a guitar according to a Pythagorean-tuning scale. (The Pythagorean intervals present an approach to musical tuning in which the frequency relationships between notes are calculated mathematically - long story.) So although he's self-taught, and although Rubenstein's music sounds a bit casual, it's cerebral stuff.

At first listen you might be ready to write this off as an amateurish attempt at music by someone with a jangly guitar, a bit of imagination and a lot of studio equipment. But after many listens it became clear that this record earns close to top-marks. It isn't the most approachable music you'll hear, and will doubtlessly have limited appeal, but this is progressive music with a capital 'P'.