![]() What's more, Blake knows when to turn on the weirdness, and when to leave things alone. It certainly is alive.Īs in one of Phish's jams, the voices – placed meticulously in Blake's binaural mix – interact naturally, each little bit reacting fluidly, as if in real-time, to something else. ![]() There is always some creative dialogue occurring. Page McConnell’s organs and pianos overlap ("Army of One"), Trey Anastasio’s guitar bursts from the corners ("Maggie’s Revenge"), layers of quiet vocals whisper impossibly ("Scents and Subtle Sounds (intro)"). Especially under headphones, Undermind is a busy, busy album. ![]() The same way that Alun Owen’s script for A Hard Day’s Night perfectly captured (or perhaps contrived) the spontaneity of The Beatles’ personalities in an artificial setting, Blake’s arrangements translate Phish’s unique complementary style of improvisation into a rich production value. And, for that, Blake performed a minor miracle: he created a record perfectly consistent with both Phish’s storied career and modern sonic values. What stands for, say, ambient in the Phish universe is very different than the kind of stuff one would find in the ambient section of a record store.įor Undermind, their 10th, newest, and final studio album, the band put themselves in the hands of producer Tchad Blake. In many ways, Phish has created their own rules. But, by dropping the band in playlists with other acts so that one hears them side-by-side with other acts, it also allows a nice perspective on the band considered within the broader rock scene. Used to cull random tracks from within Phish's body of work, it gives a surprisingly focused overview of their career, skipping with randomized abandon between the band's various minor epochs – dense compositional mouse traps, atonal horn charts, simple folk songs, arty novelty numbers, arena rock blow-outs, and on and on and on – while retaining a sense of surprise. An ideal way to listen to Phish, I've found, is by employing the shuffle feature in iTunes.
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