GREG PAGEL: Plastic Machine Music

Greg Pagel

Plastic Machine Music

© 2005 Greg Pagel (634479321672)

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Like acid jazz thrown in a blender, this CD features piano, accordion, vintage Casio keyboards, and other instruments fully exploited to create twisted, colorful, polymetric soundscapes.

notes

CDBaby official review:

Like Primus, Sun Ra and Zappa meeting inside a pinball machine, cross-breeding and sprouting new appendages while video game-like effects bounce in and out, PLASTIC MACHINE MUSIC is an ingenius hybrid of jazz fusion backdrops, experimental electronic innovation and a poprock-informed writing. While like almost all electronica, the progression and development is more linear than vertical, additive and layered, born of its computer-based, sequencing conception, there is still creative development of motives and ideas, an overall giddy enjoyment of urban, industrial and machine noises. 5 STARS!!

All about Jazz says:

"PLASTIC MACHINE MUSIC is proof enough that [Greg Pagel] is off his damned rocker, and proud to be so. And I think it is a very good thing for all of us that he is ... there's humor in the music, like in the discordant accordion funk of 'It's Hard Work' and the pastiche of new wave synthesizers in 'The 80's Sucked'; and even in song titles like 'Flesh-Eating 7th Chords' and 'Santorum.' (If you don't get that one, you had better do some research.)

His is a big Dadaist sensibility, where anything can happen in service of a song. Sometimes he'll construct a fake scat solo over an electronic loop with sampled piano ('Oddbop'). At other times, he might need to put a fake-Chinese wind-chime top over a lazy hip-hop-esque beat ('Mission Accomplished') or let synth squiggles run amok, like someone was holding mid-period Herbie Hancock over a pot of boiling oil."

reviews

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  • author: Daniel de Kok

    Greg Pagel masterfully blends instruments, beats, samples and genres into a very exciting collage. Bits remind me of Sun Ra and Zappa's Jazz From Hell, with a different twist. If this is the new direction of Jazz in the 21st century, there sure are exciting times to come!

  • SMOKIN!
    author: BROTHER

    If I were trapped on a desert island and only had to have one CD with me (along with a power source) it would be something by the Beatles. If I couldn't have a Beatles CD, I would choose Greg Pagel's Plastic Machine Music. Yes, it is that good.

  • Delightfully quirky and energetically creative.
    author: Tim Nyberg

    A jazz nut, I became familiar with Greg through keyboard work in OpenInterestJazz.com (a jazz quartet from Wisconsin). Unfamiliar with his solo work, I popped for Plastic Music Machine - mostly out of curiosity. I immediately counted the CD among my smartest music purchases. Bright, creative, wacky, adventuresome, exploratory, whimsical, dangerous, invigorating... it's the audio stuff that HAPPY is made from.

  • Great great casio rules
    author: Ambrose Pottie

    inspiring and entertaining and all that stuff. highly recommended

  • A New "Zing" on Jazz!
    author: Ms. Mackenzie Hall Kuester

    I worked at a summer camp for two weeks in August. We needed something to listen to while we made decoration for the up coming "dance". I plopped in this cd, that I had recently bought, and after only two minutes we were laughing and dancing! One of my coworkers turned to me and asked, "What IS this? What kind of music is it?" I pulled out the case, stared at it, then answered with a smile, "Pagel style."

  • Aural Poetry
    author: Steve Mueske

    This is one of the best CDs I have purchased in the last few months. Mixing wav manipulation (sampling and resampling) and jazz-based composition, Pagel creates a completely unique and inimitable sound exhibiting humor and pathos. This is highly imaginative, talented work, a real joy to listen to. Make sure you are NOT listening to it in the car for the first time -- it'll make you laugh out loud ...

  • Great
    author: Gary Fieldman

    Greg Pagel has created an important and much needed art form -- one that represents human evolution in its present state between organic and machine.

  • author: Laura Osborn

    Elegantly compiled, the various tracks on this CD are an experience in sophisticated and very groovy fun. We are in very good hands with Greg.

  • author: CD Baby

    Like Primus, Sun Ra and Zappa meeting inside a pinball machine, cross-breeding and sprouting new appendages while video game-like effects bounce in and out, Plastic Machine Music is an ingenius hybrid of jazz fusion backdrops, experimental electronic innovation and a poprock-informed writing. While like almost all electronica, the progression and development is more linear than vertical, additive and layered, born of its computer-based, sequencing conception, there is still creative development of motives and ideas, an overall giddy enjoyment of urban, industrial and machine noises.

  • Go Greg!
    author: Jonathan Dimond

    "Plastic Machine Music" communicates well Greg Pagel's immensely infectious humour, which somehow he manages to fuse with his sophisticated compositional style and adept keyboard chops. Never one to say something not worth saying, this recording is a fun conversation with plenty of variety of moods and topics thrown in.

  • Wow!
    author: Mel

    Great CD! Very funky, lots of surprises. Covers many moods and styles, but always groovin'. Highly recommended!

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