Album Notes

Steve Rubin and Warren Sirota, aka The Sandbox, have the kind of musical rapport that can only come from a *long* time playing together - they met over 45 years ago, in a NY kindergarten! In their late teens, they played together in a jazz fusion freeform power trio (Steve on drums, Warren on guitar, and friend Jeremy on bass). And then Warren drifted West, eventually to write the Electronic Guitarist column for Guitar Player magazine, and study electronic music at the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College. Steve stayed in NY and played a lot of club dates.

In 2001, Warren moved back to NY. Since then, he and Steve have been developing a new improvisational vocabulary, combining their sometimes astonishing ability to turn on a dime together with electronic sounds and live loops. They create rich textures and exotic melody lines, performed with the passion and excitement of committed live players.

The name "The Sandbox" comes from their deliberately child-like approach to the sonic possibilities of their new toys. The musical mastery that they each have after many years of playing classical, rock and jazz music are applied to new pallette of sounds and techniques, with an attitude of discovery.

********

About those loops: The first 6 tracks use loops - recorded segments of music that repeat for some section of the piece. Often, the loops are multi-layered. No samples or pre-recorded loops are used in this music (not that there's anything wrong with that...) In this recording, all loops are recorded from what Warren is playing - recording is started and stopped with a footpedal, as are all overdubbed layers. This frees us to go anywhere we feel like going in any improvisation.

********

About the gear: Loops were recorded using custom software written by Warren. Steve plays a Roland Handsonic percussion synthesizer. Warren plays guitars (a Godin nylon-string electric and a custom electric) equipped with pickups that allow them to act as synthesizer "controllers", so his guitar sometimes sounds like a flute, sometimes like a Japanese koto, etc.