Showing posts with label Jim Combs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jim Combs. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
The Sunset District Podcast Interviews Sensitive Chaos and Suicide Lane
Sensitive Chaos (Jim Combs) and Sensitive Chaos collaborator Christian Birk are interviewed by The Sunset District podcast: On iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Counterfeit i interviews Jim Combs/Sensitive Chaos
COUNTERFEIT I
A GLIMPSE, AN ECLIPSE
MUSICIAN INTERVIEW WITH JIM COMBS
3 Days Ago
Here is our interview with our friend Jim Combs from Sensitive Chaos. Check him out:
What do you think is your role as a musician today?
Jim: My role is to find new ways to open my ears and mind to new sounds and music, and hopefully influence other people's minds, too. Alot of my music is about slowing things down and letting original thoughts shine through the media barrage that is so much of our existence today.
Jim: My role is to find new ways to open my ears and mind to new sounds and music, and hopefully influence other people's minds, too. Alot of my music is about slowing things down and letting original thoughts shine through the media barrage that is so much of our existence today.
How do you feel about today's popular music? How does it influence how people view your art?
Jim: Popular music hides the majority of great music that's available. I hear more genuinely good music on my iTunes library set to shuffle in an afternoon than I hear on the radio over a year. And my library has a ton of popular music on it (Ashlee Simpson and Jesse McCartney just popped up on my flight back from NYC this week). It's just that popular music is so narrowly programmed, it misses 99.9999% of all the great music available.
That said, most people who listen to popular music will recognize something interesting and familiar in my music. Synthesizers and drum machines are the norm.
Do you feel there is a justifiable distinction between your art and what is popular among the masses?
Jim: No, both are cultural expressions. My personal art just gets less exposure than mass artists, though I'm pretty lucky with radio airplay in comparison to many of my extremely talented peers. With the success of Trent Reznor's music in Academy Award-level films, and Laurie Spiegel's music now in The Hunger Games, electronic music continues to receive plenty of airtime. You'll rarely hear it on the radio anymore, however.
Do you think music as an art form is fading away?
Jim: No, the art form is strong, but the music itself is integrated into everything we do, so it has become ubiquitous and commoditized. The noise level of the mass market is high, and you have to be really clever to get noticed.
Why do you feel driven to be a musician?
I was just born with it. It's a blessing and a curse. I'm my most happiest when music is involved. One of those genes we carry around in our DNA must relate to music, and in my case, it is a primary trait. Just wish my hand coordination was better;^)
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Combs Creek Haller CD "Singularity" Released on Earth Mantra
My latest double CD "Singularity" w/ master musicians Jez Creek and Kevin Haller is released and available free:
As we've written many times, one of the great pleasures of running a netlabel is to meet new artists and release their music. A related pleasure that is in many ways even cooler is to be able to release something for the first time by folks you already know and love. It is precisely that honor that we have today, with this majestic new release called Singularity.
This magnificent two-disc album was recorded live the evening of November 6 and into the morning of November 7, 2009. It so happened that Jez Creek, who calls Nottingham in the United Kingdom home, was visiting in the Atlanta, Georgia area as part of his USA tour, in order to perform at the City Skies electronic music concert on November 7. Kevin Haller, whose house Jez was staying at, was also performing at the same concert. And Jim Combs, being the organizer and founder of the concert series, was of course going to be performing as well. So just for fun, the three decided to do a live concert on StillStream.com the night before the big show. And the results were so good that they decided to release the recordings as this album.
Amazingly, given the quality of the pieces, the music was completely improvised. The musicians had never performed together as a group before this set and no preparations were done prior to the broadcast except for choosing keys and tempos. Somehow these three artists who had never played together at the same time, and had done almost nothing to prepare, immediately found a zone in which electronic ambient music of the highest order started pouring forth. Needless to say, the audience that night was blown away by the set, and we think that our listeners are going to be similarly impressed by what they hear in Singularity.
For indeed, this is some of the most beautiful live ambient music we have heard in quite awhile. Earth Mantra has long been a fan of all three of the artists' solo work, but we were dumbfounded by the synergy the three artists found so effortlessly as they sat down to play. Improvising live ambient music can be a challenging task, and to do it really well, with the right balance of patience and activity, is surprisingly hard. The fact that these three artists could hit such a bullseye, with zero preparation and without the benefit of knowing each other's live playing styles, is in our eyes nothing short of miraculous.
We could attempt to describe this music to you, but ultimately we would fail. Suffice it to say that it is beautiful, it is well constructed, very competently performed, and it just plain rocks. Better yet, why not download a copy of this album right now and give it a listen for yourself. We are certain that any fan of ambient music will be very happy they did.
http://earthmantra.com/cchsingularity
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Free mp3 download of new music from The Good Graces
My alt folk band, The Good Graces, is giving away our new EP for FREE - one song at a time.
Get the first one, "Working Title" here:
http://bringonthetambourines.com
The Good Graces are Kim Ware, John McNicholas, and Jim Combs
More new band photos can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/maigh/sets/72157621639172742/
This song features my Fender Rhodes and a Korg MonoPoly soft synth. Kim does vocals, acoustic gtr, and drums, and John does electric guitar.
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