Album Notes

New York based outfit, Joe Matzzie Beyond Belief, represents that rare project that incorporates Rock, World, Jazz, and Rhythm into honest, melodic pop.

Beyond Belief's current mini-CD, The First 20 Minutes, has been heard on over 35 college radio stations in the northeast. Creative mastermind and mad genius behind the band, Joe Matzzie, formed Beyond Belief as an outlet for his own musical frustration and creative inspiration.

Beyond Belief's extravaganza of sound and melody takes the listener right into the beat of the city that is the Melting Pot of America. The concept of city living, the challenge of survival, not only gave the band its name but also became the background noise for The First 20 Minutes.

While comparisons to Ska are inevitable due to the horns, Beyond Belief represents a different approach. Matzzie has been writing and arranging music since his early days in music school. "I was surrounded by musicians and just started writing for them," Matzzie recalls. "I wrote the song Way Home. Originally it was four horns. It was recorded in my bedroom, and that was the first arrangement I wrote for horns. When I write a song, I'm not thinking about rules, or trying to follow them. It's the energy.

The First 20 Minutes features six original songs that convey this emotion, hard driven, soft-spoken, tender and furious, the songs stand out with a definitive style that loses nothing for all of the mayhem. Like the city that never sleeps, Beyond Belief makes it work. That, and as bassist Lee Butterfield describes it, "Joe's one tenacious motherfucker."

The release of The First 20 Minutes has earned them label interest, a showcase at The 1998 Philadelphia Music Conference, and winning an unsigned band contest hosted by web design company, V.L.Design.

With no place to pull over safely, Joe Matzzie Beyond Belief has arrived.