Album Notes

New CD Burns With Creative Heat Singer-songwriter Monique Barry launches a combustive new set of songs and takes up her own green initiative to boot with the release of her third CD Carbon. An acknowledged master in the creation of “delicious sounds and shadows” (RHiG Magazine), Monique’s first two albums, moody and Tripping, revealed a musing, meditative style unlike any other. On Carbon she directs her pensive powers into her most mature and expressive effort to date, with environmental dynamics and emotional jeopardy running through the album’s themes. In the world of Carbon, the elemental meets the sentimental. From track to track, changing backgrounds and inhospitable landscapes define relationships. Middleclass gives us an emotionally hazardous environment where the waters are “too cold to swim in.” Mockingbird profiles an outcast who “takes every word to its core,” turning language into its own toxic turf. And the title track gets a good deal of its traction from its presentation of car travel as a symbol of personal liberty and pollution the price we pay for it. Providing variations on mood and theme is the three-part series of Stocker tracks: Vocal Stocker, Slowdance Stocker, and Ambient Stocker, which go from ghostly vibrations to dance-floor drifting to starglow atmospherics. Accompanying Monique’s soaring vocals and coaxing keyboards is regular bandmate Nadjiwan on guitar, as well as Dave Buland on bass and Alex Mine on drums. Also joining Monique once again is ambient maestro Terry O’Brien (aka Anomalous Disturbances), providing seductive electronic soundscapes with both supernatural and space age fascination. Other players on Carbon include N.Q. Arbuckle on vocals and violinist Ariana Nasr (from Thugs at Bay), who previously brought her bewitching work to most of the songs on moody. Dics are available at any time to those interested, but Monique requests that listeners who rely on computers and portable devices to enjoy their music to consider purchasing the electronic version of Carbon. All ordered discs of Carbon come in a home-made cover using minimal packaging.