Noir jazz
meets midnight blues in the music of Twin Danger – an intriguing new group
formed by Vanessa Bley and Stuart Matthewman, whose self–titled, co-produced
and co-written debut album appears on the Decca Universal
Music Classics label.
Twin Danger
updates a classic sound in a contemporary style with such captivating
Bley/Matthewman originals as "Pointless Satisfaction," "Just
Because," "Sailor," and "Coldest Kind of Heart." The
album sessions also yielded one surprising cover song, a distinctively
different interpretation of the hard–rock track "No One Knows" by
Queens of the Stone Age. The core of
Twin Danger is Bley and Matthewman, however on-stage for their sultry live
performances the band expands with a tight-knit outfit of five musicians.
Vanessa Bley grew up in a close-knit artistic community in upstate New York. Her mother is
the painter and video artist Carol Goss; her father is the renowned jazz
pianist Paul Bley, who worked with Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, and Ornette
Coleman in addition to several dozen albums – many issued on the Improvising
Artists label, which Goss and Bley co–founded in 1974. Surrounded by the creative
arts growing up, Vanessa studied piano for several years but found she
preferred improvisation and songwriting to practicing classical
repertoire. "I love Chopin and Bach
but lacked the patience to play technically correct. Meanwhile, my father would
tell me ‘you can either sit down at the piano and improvise or you can do the
dishes.' So I'd try to play something like...oh, the sounds of a
thunderstorm."
Vanessa also
began playing guitar and bass, teaching herself both instruments. After high
school, she moved to New York to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology for
Cosmetics & Fragrance Development and Marketing. Within a short time,
Vanessa was showcasing her original material at various downtown venues and
occasionally co–writing songs with different collaborators, including Estonian
pop singer Kerli. Vanessa and Kerli co–wrote "Creepshow" for the
latter's 2008 album Love Is Dead. Meanwhile, Kerli was writing separately with
Matthewman – and it was she who suggested that Vanessa would vibe with this
talented Englishman...
Stuart Matthewman, born in Hull, England, co–founded the group Sade with Sade Adu,
Paul S. Denman, and Andrew Hale. Stuart and Sade co–wrote many of the
best–loved songs on the band's multi–platinum albums including "No Ordinary
Love," "By Your Side," and "Your Love is King." In
1996, Matthewman, Denman, and Hale formed Sweetback, a predominantly
instrumental band whose albums Sweetback (1996) and Stage 2 (2004) featured
guest vocals by Maxwell and Amel Larrieux among others. Subsequent projects for Matthewman included
working with Maxwell on three of the superstar's albums, remixes under the name
Cottonbelly, and compositions for film and television. The latter included "The Astronaut
Farmer" starring Billy Bob Thornton and the Emmy–nominated "Life
Support" starring Queen Latifah.
Stuart plays
guitar and keyboards, but his unmistakable tenor saxophone tone predominates in
Twin Danger. "Vanessa and I share an odd, eclectic taste in music, from
Black Sabbath to Chet Baker to film soundtracks," says Stuart. "We
weren't thinking it all out or going for a particular sound – Twin Danger just
happened the way it did. If we'd really thought about it, we'd have never made
a jazz record!"
At first,
Stuart started playing guitar on Vanessa's gigs in the Lower East Side, but
soon they began to develop a deeper creative collaboration. Stuart recalls:
"I was messing around on guitar with these strange chords that I didn't
really think could add up to anything. I mentioned it to Vanessa and she said,
oh, send it over. "About an hour later she came back with this beautiful
song, ‘Just Because.' The demo is pretty much what you hear now on the
album...and we went on from there."
In 2013,
following a packed Twin Danger set at Otto's Shrunken Head in the East Village,
an enthusiastic Japanese promoter approached Stuart and Vanessa. The next thing
they knew, Twin Danger was en route to Tokyo where the band performed a run of
ecstatically received shows at the prestigious venue Billboard Live. In September
2014, Twin Danger joined forces with Josh Fox, director of the Oscar–nominated
documentary Gasland, for "The Solutions Grassroots Tour." Coinciding
with the massive People's Climate March, this multi–media production was
designed both to motivate communities to adopt renewable energy solutions and
to raise the campaign banner for pro–renewable energy legislation. The show,
which included guest host appearances by actors Mark Ruffalo and Debra Winger,
ran for five sold–out nights at Brooklyn's Irondale Theater.
As for the
origin of the name Twin Danger, Vanessa Bley explains: "It refers to the
alter ego, the part of you that can be wild or irrational or even destructive –
but it's still a part of you and not accepting that is what makes it dangerous."
"We're making music to get lost in. It's warm and beautiful but there are
dark undercurrents revealing fundamental issues of the self. That's what makes
it Twin Danger."
The band
performs live with a crew of friends: Robert Granata (guitar), Anthony Marchesi
(keys/vocal harmony), Omar Little (trumpet), Julian Smith (bass), and Nick
Anderson (drums).
No comments:
Post a Comment