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Hello from intodown! The songs posted here are excerpts from the Brave New World CD. Not enough space to load the complete songs. There is way more music to each of the pieces. Check out the CD which is where it's happening. If you dig the music, let us know you stopped by!
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AND YOU GET:
The cool, free sticker insert, per request.
Inclusion in the Inner Circle (see Website)
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Free, high quality downloads of new intodown music created for Inner Circle members
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Opportunity to provide input to intodown
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"Michael Clark transcends all the usual musical definitions - his is a
unique blend of blues, surf, '60s rock sensibilities and totally
out-there psychedelia." Chuck Flores, Buddy Magazine
"Epic Instrumental Rock" numberonemusic.com
"intodown is a band that takes the listener on a psychedelic trip without freaking them out! The bands ability to jell with each other is excellent and the sounds are effortless. Michael Clark's guitar playing is a true testament to the psychedelic guitar rock genre. I highly recommend...I said "highly"...intodown if you are ready to peak." Les Lewellyn (Preying Lizard Music and Dixie Lizard)
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Review of Brave New World CD
Michael Clark leads the psychedelic decent into the rabbit hole with a variety of drummers, bass players and multi instrumentalists. Brave New World is a skillfully executed instrumental rock album that reverberates below the radar of mainstream pop with Clark making exquisite us of power chords, riffs, and improvisation.
Clark has studied the blueprints of early hillbilly rock, black blues, the late-'60's Clapton-Green-Page mob, and past and present garage bands. He relies exclusively on the use of a Gibson guitar and Hi-Watt amp, which provides sonic consistency as the band effortlessly, trips from an epic musical muse to an extended wild-ass jam.
The arrangements on the album range from 5 to 20 minutes in length, and although one is getting a great musical value, and one heck of a magical adventure, the songs may be too long for today's attention deficit disordered consumer.
As Clark and his band of subterranean lurkers speak in musical tongues about the past, art and existentialism they may very well be the future of rock'n'roll.
Review By: S.D. Peer
www.skopemagazine.com
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Interview with Michael Clark by Andrew Logan, freelance journalist, 12-6-05
Andrew: I saw your show last night and I thought the jam pieces were incredible. So, I guess a good place to start is to tell me a bit about your musical influences.
Michael: Well, I'm glad you came out to see what we're up to! In terms of musical influences, I'd have to say that Peter Green, Eric Clapton of the Mayall and Cream era, and Jimi Hendrix are influences. But, so are many of the blues guys like Otis Rush, T- Bone, PeeWee Crayton, Gatemouth Brown, B.B. King, Magic Sam, Hound Dog Taylor and many other great players. Dick Dale is an influence. So is David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. And, Hollywood Fats for sure.
Andrew: So you blend these styles into your playing?
Michael: I don't really know. It all goes into the psyche somehow and comes out the way it does. I don't consciously try to do anything but play what seems to be emotionally wanting to be heard.
Andrew: So your sort of a conduit?
Michael: Exactly. My goal is to get out of the way. Let the guitar become transparent. Just be an expression of what seems to want to be heard at that moment. That's my goal, anyway.
Andrew: But many players I have spoken with seem to really admire your library of guitar licks.
Michael: Ha! I appreciate that, but I don't think I have any licks per se. I mean, I guess I do within a certain context. But, I don't think of guitar playing in terms of licks.
Andrew: How do you look at it?
Michael: In terms of phrasing. In terms of pure expression. Telling a story. A story that's not so much my story. It's the story that's being given to me at that moment.
Andrew: By whom?
Michael: I don't know. The spirit guides I guess.
Andrew: Does this relate to your interest in psychedelic music?
Michael: Psychedelic music plays a role. Maybe an important role. At least if we look at some forms of psychedelic music as having the goal of expanding the mind musically. Sort of putting Huxley or Leary or certain philosophical constructs to music.
Andrew: So psychedelic music is a big influence.
Michael: Well, not all of it. Not very much of it, actually. I would say mainly the 13th Floor Elevators. They changed the way I looked at music probably as much as Hendrix did.
Andrew: How?
Michael: When I saw them for the first time, I was in a band that played Beatles, Stones, Animals stuff. We opened for the Elevators. We were all dressed alike in our Beatle boots, matching jeans, silk shirts. We did our set and then the Elevators played. I was transported into another place. I knew I could never go back to how I was maybe an hour before. So, I joined the psychedelic music scene. I got into "The Psychedelic Sounds Of" very deeply. I'm still there.
Andrew: And you bring that into your playing today?
Michael: I attempt to. It's my interpretation, of course. But, it's in my blood. Maybe I should say it's in my mind! Or in my cells! Ha!
Andrew: Do you like any of the current guitar players?
Michael: Sure. Jim Thomas of the Mermen is fantastic. The fellow who plays with Radiohead is cool. I like some of the Nine Inch Nails stuff in terms of what they do with the guitar. The guy who played with Portisehead was very tasteful.
Andrew: Are there guitar players you don't find very interesting?
Michael: Well, yes. I think we are in a very low point in music. I'm not fond of guitar players who think the instrument is about how fast they can play scales. What's that about? It's dull and boring. It's like they don't know how to express feeling and emotion, so they just play scales fast. Like little sterile, plastic computers spitting out 0's and 1's.
Andrew: What is intodown all about? What does it mean?
Michael: It is a state of mind, a feeling, a place of origination. "Down" is sort of that mind state that is below the radar. Somewhere melancholy. Pensive. It is where the mystery lives. It is that in-between place of here and there. The rabbit hole. I invite people to join me there. intodown.
Andrew: So it's a state of being?
Michael: Perhaps a state of non-being. It's a trance state of sorts where you step outside yourself into another world or dimension. I give control over to something else. I get out of the way. I release my grip on things. It's like jumping into river with a slow - well sometimes slow - moving current. Just go with it. No questions. No answers. No right or wrong. It's go with it and try to stay in it without trying too hard. Trying too hard will take you out of it.
Andrew: So that's where some of the great guitar playing comes from?
Michael: Yes. But, please know that I don't take ownership of it. It's being given to me. It's up to me to be a good translator. To be able to play on the guitar what is coming through me. My job is to build sufficient facility on the guitar to perform an adequate translation. My task is facility. The more facility, the more I am given to express or translate.
Andrew: So what's next for you?
Michael: Well, I'm completing a new CD project that is very important to me. It's mostly improvisational, psychedelic rock and roll. High energy, edgy stuff. I'm very excited about it. Basically bass, drums and me on guitar.
Andrew: Well, I really look forward to hearing the CD! And thank you for your time!
Michael: Thank you for your interest! I've enjoyed speaking with you.
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wise criticians have called the music of intodown:
"sex music, stoner, xtreme, experimental, adrenalined, aggressive, hostile,
psychedelic, progressive, hypnotic, trippy, jam music, theme music, music for film" - better to let them have their way.
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the posted songs are pieces we play in our live show. it's how we sound live - just louder. more on the website. drop in.
intense, edgy, progressive, psychedelic, improvisational rock from one of the foremost guitarists of the genre.
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People have labeled us;
a stoner band.
an art rock band.
a progessive rock band.
a surf rock band.
a psychedelic rock band.
an instrumental rock band.
We are none of those things. We are simply a medium of exchange.
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