ARTIST DESCRIPTION
Prior World reaches behind, around and in between existing musical genres to create something new. Creating lush, interwoven textures, Prior World develops themes that appear and reappear, as in film scores and classical music. The band uses the widest range of old and new instrumentation - including electric, acoustic and synthesized guitars, computers, keyboards; electronic and acoustic percussion, special effects and selected atmospherics. The result is a richly textured world, evoking strains of ancient tribal rituals interlaced with the data-driven images from the Internet and the latest in global communications that transcends traditional nationlistic borders.
MUSIC STYLE
Elements of World, Ambient, Jazz -- lush synth textures with edgy, jazz-influenced guitar and synth melodies, ambient and environmental sounds, world percussion. Our music has frequently been referred to as visually evocative, like a film score without a film.
MUSICAL INFLUENCES
John McLaughlin, Miles Davis, Brian Eno, Robert Fripp, David Torn, Mark Isham, Peter Gabriel, Steve Roach, Bill Laswell, Hans Zimmer, Pat Metheny
SIMILAR ARTISTS
Miles Davis, Mark Isham (Tibet), John McLaughlin (My Goal's Beyond, Shakti), Eno (Apollo, etc.), Pat Metheny, Hans Zimmer
ARTIST HISTORY
Prior World grew out of a collaboration in the early 90s between two guitarists -- Doug Frohman and Chuck Duff. We were both heavily influenced by the work of guitarists who have pushed the envelope like John McLaughlin, Larry Coryell, Pat Metheny, David Torn and Robert Fripp, along with cutting-edge film composers like Mark Isham, Graham Revelle, and Hans Zimmer. In the spirit of McLaughlin's work on My Goal's Beyond and Shakti, Peter Gabriel's score for The Last Temptation of Christ, Prior World explores the newspaces that occur when western music is brought into close contact with Indian, Middle Eastern and African melodies and percussion. As opposed to "tunes", we create journeys that touch and inspire people's imagination, feeling and memory.
GROUP MEMBERS
Chuck Duff - keyboards, samples, guitars, digital editing. Doug Frohman - acoustic, electric guitars, bass, percussion. John Buehler - percussion, samples, mixed and mastered the disk. Percussionists John Haas, New York and Lisa Ziemann, Chicago.
INSTRUMENTS
Acoustic Guitar, Electric Guitar, e-Bow, Ensoniq ASR-10 Sampler, Roland JD-800, E-mu Proteus 3, Conga, Dhoumbeck, other acoustic and sampled percussion.
ALBUMS
Tales of a Prior World
PRESS REVIEWS
Beautifully constructed moodily atmospheric album from Isham, Eno, Gabriel, Davis and McLaughlin-inspired Chuck Duff and Doug Frohman of Prior World. Hand drum rhythms and thunderstorm sound effects transport the listener to exotic destinations setting the context for an ambience that then borrows from In a Silent Way and My Goal's Beyond and later synth-dominated Weather Report chic. "Lazy tempos are the escort through a bustling marketplace to find the magic carpet that will ride a samiel of elegant guitar lines, across clouds plump with synth wizardry, towards a glorious e-Bow coloured sunset. Not to be mistaken for "smooth" nor "quiet storm", this is quality Ambience for the jazz mind..." Julian Derry, The John McLaughlin Archives (http://www.angelfire.com/jazz/jmweb/)
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