Music Inspired by Light Boxes is music inspired by Light Boxes, a novel by Shane Jones. Light Boxes is powerful and elegant, a fight against melancholy, a fierce fairytale, an emotionally stirring story that hit me in my belly and my head, that surprised me, that made things move inside me. It’s both formally inventive and evocative of loss, memory, desire, sadness, and love. Light Boxes demanded a creative response from me. What I wrote about it here was a prologue. All instruments were played by me, and every voice, save one, is mine. Here’s my epic.
1. Empty Holes in the Sky
…………………………………………………………………..
2. Nights Like These Will Soon Die
…………………………………………………………………..
3. February (Chant)
…………………………………………………………………..
4. The Solution
…………………………………………………………………..
5. Bianca and Thaddeus
…………………………………………………………………..
6. I Want My Daughter Back
…………………………………………………………………..
7. February’s Theme
…………………………………………………………………..
8. I’m So Cold
…………………………………………………………………..
9. The Girl Who Smelled of Honey and Smoke
…………………………………………………………………..
10. Flight Returned to the Town
…………………………………………………………………..
11. Thaddeus Wore the Light Box on His Head
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
METHOD MAN BROUGHT THE PAIN.
BILL CLINTON FELT YOUR PAIN.
MOTHER FLUX HEALS YOUR PAIN!
MOTHER FLUX formed in New York City as a rock power trio by songwriter and guitarist John Madera with three goals in mind. First, to create energetic music fusing rock, funk, and noise. Second, to hit all the dives with songs, extended improvisations, and poetry that bordered on invocations of holy spirits. And finally, release an album of original music that rocks the head and shakes the rump. In January 2007, Mother Flux releases their first full-length album entitled: Divine Day Formula.
Mother Flux’s music easily fits in shuffle play with the likes of The Eels, Rainer Maria, Sparta, and Built To Spill along with the Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age, Jane’s Addiction, and the Smashing Pumpkins, while segueing seamlessly into Godzilla rock like Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath. They serve a mixed drink of Seattle grudge music, Sixties freakflag flying, heart-on-sleeve ballads, New York Noise, and machines making love.
Award-winning poet John Madera’s credits include playing with John Legend’s keyboardist Chris Rob, D’Angelo’s touring guitarist Jef Lee Johnson, Dub Trio‘s Stu Brooks, Shara Worden from My Brightest Diamond, Wheatus‘s Gerard Hoffmann, Bogs Visionary Orchestra’s Alex Talavera, Poet Sage Rader, Dub Affair and Noirkestra’s Benoir, Victor Wooten’s drummers J.D. Blair and Derico Watson, and Indian classical music violinist Ganesh Prasad. John is equally adept at guitar, voice, bass, and drums and counts Prince, Stevie Wonder, and Dave Grohl as multi-instrumentalist paragons. His soloing is an amalgam of the caterwaul shrieks of Vernon Reid and Sonny Sharrock, the layered terraces of Mahavishu Orchestra’s John McLaughlin, and the searing blues of Jimi Hendrix, or at least he thinks so. A schoolteacher from the West Coast, who moonlights as a rockabilly punk, said John’s vocals sound like a cross between the Dead Kennedy’s Jello Biafra and Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker. Huh? Must be that excessive melisma thing going on.
Mother Flux’s cd Divine Day Formula is available now at cdbaby.com.
|
Or, download the songs (without the awesome artwork and lyrics) by
clicking on the iTunes button below.
