Welcome to Positive Signal Flow. This album of experimental electronic music continues and refines the work Nick began with his previous experimental album, Islands in the Stream.
Positive Signal Flow is a feast for the ears, consisting of a series of long, abstract pieces that flow and crackle, sometimes with long waves of gentle subtlety, then with quick, intensive motion, always changing, always moving. Much of the music was recorded live in concert, in order to capture the expressive, in-the-moment, human nature of the work, but the production quality is, as usual, top notch.
If your taste in music doesn't go beyond traditional song structures and instruments, then PSF is not for you. But if you are into such artists as Brian Eno, The Orb, Morton Subotnick, the musique concrete artists of the 50's and 60's, or even the outside edge of ambient/techno (sorry, no drum machines here), then Positive Signal Flow will give your ears a highly satisfying tickle.
One suggestion: Listen late at night, in the dark, in headphones. It's that kind of music.
Nick Peck's Bio:
Nick is a San Francisco Bay Area native. He began piano lessons at 8.
Peck spent his teenage years exploring pop music, and began writing
his own compositions at 18. He began playing in progressive rock bands
while in college. Starting in the late 80's, Peck fronted the Marin
County-based prog rock group Episode for about a decade, recording two
albums and gigging regionally. Peck continued his formal training in
electronic music, receiving a BA from San Francisco State University
and MFA from Mills College in Oakland, California. During that period,
he focused on composing serious 20th century electronic music,
particularly using modular analog synthesizers, analog tape, and field
recordings.
In the mid-nineties, Peck recorded a big, sprawling epic progressive
rock album called Under the Big Tree. The creation of this album
marked a shift of focus from structured music to more improvisational
techniques. He then co-founded the jamband Ten Ton Chicken. Though
Peck had been playing Hammond organ since he was a teenager, it was
during this period that the organ really became his primary
instrument. After five years, 150 gigs, and two albums with the band,
Peck left to focus on jazz. Six months later, he formed the Mill
Valley Jazz Collective, a soul jazz group.
In 2004, Peck formed Sycamore Park, a funk/jazz band which recorded
and gigged around the Bay Area for a couple of years. His most recent
project is an album of acid and soul jazz compositions entitled "Fire
Trucks I Have Known", which was released in September 2007. As of this
writing, Peck is rehearsing up a new band, the Nick Peck Organ Trio,
to gig in support of the album.
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