Blue Nights [disc 1]  (47:56)
	01	Piercing Glances						07:50
	02	Etude Revisited						05:28
	03	A Palace of Pearls						05:59
	04	Original Sin						08:13
	05	Dentures of the Gods						06:26
	06	Deeper Blue						06:31
	07	Cobalt Canyons						07:29
Blue Nights (Disc2)  (58:52)
	01	Fin de Siecle						05:48
	02	Picnic on Vesuvius						09:29
	03	Cerulean Sea						07:05
	04	Bent Taqasim/Torn Drumbass						05:42
	05	Cracking The Midnight Glass						06:53
	06	Presidents Day						06:46
	07	3 Minutes of Pure Entertainment						11:03
	08	Outer Blue						06:06

BLUE NIGHTS

Having recorded the BLUE cd, the band toured Japan and various clubs in the U.S, recording all the shows to multiple ADAT's. When it was all over, all the performances were studied (not an easy job!) and the best were chosen for this project. Mixing proved a pretty big job - blending the sounds of different nights in different clubs into a cohesive package.

Too many good pieces to sqeeze into one CD, so we decided to make it a double. Then the idea arose of having some remix engineers take our live playing and use it for material for remixes. Possibly a good idea for future PapaBear release, but we only had room for one remix on this project - it's by SplatterCell, and is presented as a bonus track, after a long pause at the end of CD2.


THE PACKAGE

As is usual with Papa Bear releases, there's a lot in the package. The booklet contains excerpts (text and photos) from the Road Diaries that appeared here on the site during the tour.
There are some other photos in the package, taken of the group onstage, and some shots of audiences peek through from behind the cd's.
This is the first of Papa Bear Records releases to NOT have a custom cardboard package - it's just the usual jewel case with insert panels and booklets. The reason for the change is twofold: we've had mixed comments from our buyers about the cardboard packages - some loving them, some requesting a more durable package (hey, it's ART!) But the bigger reason is economical; to print the previous packaging required as large a printing volume as possible, to hold down the higher cost. So we estimated the eventual sales of World Diary, From the Caves, and BLUE. Trouble is, when those initial runs are all sold, it won't be possible to re-print in the same way. The good news: anyone who has, or gets, any of the first runs of those earlier cd's will have something of a collectors item - future runs will be to jewel box.

THE TRACKS
Notes from the cd booklet

Piercing Glances
We started off many shows with Bill entering the stage alone - then one at a time, we would each join in. Having no plan for the piece, we were as entertained as the audience to hear what would transpire at each performance. On this night, after we'd each solo'd and eased into some kind of piece, there was an unplanned segue into Etude Revisited.

Deeper Blue
As many songs have a life of their own, playing this one live changed it a lot. The Botti/ Torn intro, free from drums and bass, developed out on the road as Bill and I would sit and listen to the other two musicians make magic.

Cobalt Canyons
Astute listeners who have heard the BLUE CD version of this piece will notice the unusual addition of a vocal sample, strummed live into the guitar pickups by electrical wizard Torn, to set up the tempo of the rollicking live version.

Picnic on Vesuvius
This piece was born one night, at The Knitting Factory in New York City. On playing an improvised piece, the band almost magically came up with chords, a melody, rhythm, sections - all from out of the air. After the show we ran to Robert Frazza, to check that the ADATs had been recording the marvelous event. They hadn't. In fact, due to technical problems, no tape had been running at all - we had no record of the music. I knew we wouldn't remember all the intricacies, so I came up with this solution; on the web site I re-quested any fans who might have taped the show to please send a copy, so that we could learn the piece that had only happened that one time. After some initial reluctance (it's not kosher to tape shows) we were sent no less that four tapes of that night. Though the quality was rough, we were able to learn the piece, and played it thereafter. We called it "the Industrial Improv" until Bill came up with the current title.

Cerulean Sea
On the BLUE cd this piece starts off with David Torn's outer space loops, then the bass enters, and then the vocal drone on it's one note. On tour, it seemed more challenging to start off with the vocal note unaccompanied, and ... see whether the pitch was still in when the bass joins in. (Many nights it wasn't!)

Torn Drumbass
The original composition is only the last minutes of this much more complex version, where David Torn gives reign to his electric oud. He titled his lead in Bent Taqasim which refers to an Arabic word for an improvised out-of-time introduction.
Bill Bruford is known to most of the visitors to this page. He's a longtime member of King Crimson, and has been a member of the influential groups Yes and U.K. When not out with Crimson, Bill tours and records with his own group: Earthworks. Bill recently started his own web site.
On Blue Nights you hear Bill at his wildest, and most expressive. The CD starts, as did the live shows, with Bill playing alone on stage. There are a few drum solos, a few improvised pieces where he shines, and a couple of Bill's compositions from the earlier BLUE CD.


Tony Levin, (who's site, of course, you're looking at), plays all his basses on this cd: the Chapman Stick, NS Electric Upright, and the Music Man bass (with funk fingers.) There's some featured Stick playing, a bowed bass solo intro, and some featured wierdness from the Funk Fingers with ring modulation(!)


David Torn, well known for his own albums and sound tracks, plays guitars - but that doesn't describe much of the unique element he brings to this music. Unearthly loops, electric oud, bouzouki... things like that give you a better idea of how he sounds in the group.
Also here is one of David's better known compositions: Three Minutes of Pure Entertainment, from his classic Cloud About Mercury CD. That CD had Bruford and Levin on it, which led to the group doing 3 Minutes as an encore piece. (It lasts closer to 9 minutes now!)


Chris Botti on trumpet provides the lead voice for the group. His own releases, on the Verve Forcast label, are more jazz oriented than the playing with BLUE.
Here, Chris gets pretty wild, with the other players, but at many times pulls things together with a great melodic sense, and sparse playing.
Some of the tracks feature duo introductions with Chris and guitar, which weren't on the studio cd, but developed as the pieces were played live.


MORE ABOUT THE TRACKS

Presidents Day
On the BLUE cd, this was a piece mixing Bill's furious electronic drumming loops with improvised acoustic kit playing - all with the band playing over it, and samples of various bits from elsewhere in the cd thrown into the pot. Unable to match this concoction, we avoided the piece on tour until one night, at the Theater of Living Arts in Philadelphia, when we decided, on the spur of the moment, to try it.

3 Minutes of Pure Entertainment
A David Torn composition, from his classic CD Cloud About Mercury. Bill and I had played on that release with David, and the wild playing opportunities of this composition made it an ideal encore for the BLUE group.
The cd has Bill's introduction of the piece, where he chides David Torn for having had too little drums in the mix of the original album.

All compositions:
A Palace of Pearls (on a Blade of Grass)
Bent Taqasim
Cerulean Sea
Cobalt Canyons
Cracking the Midnight Glass
Deeper Blue
Dentures of the Gods
Etude Revisited
Fin de Siecle
Outer Blue
Original Sin
Picnic on Vesuvius
Piercing Glances
Presidents Day
3 Minutes of Pure Entertainment
Torn DrumBass


WHICH CLUBS

Track on BLUE NIGHTS were recorded at:
House of Blues / Boston
The Bottom Line / NYC
Theater of Living Arts / Philly
The ParkWest / Chicago
Orion Sound / Baltimore
The Birchmere Theater / Alexandria


TECHNICAL INFO

The shows were recorded to multiple ADAT machines. To mix, we used the EMAGIC Logic Platinum system. Our recording and mixing engineer: Robert Frazza, assisted in mixing by David Torn. Mastering was done by David Torn. In the mastering process, we utilized the LINN Hi Fi System, which was very helpful in fine tuning the sound, and revealing sound problems.



BLUE
REVIEWS


As we toured, local papers and magazines came out with some reviews of our studio cd: Bruford Levin Upper Extremities.
Here, for fun, are some quotes from some; (Boston Globe, S.F. Chronicle, Phil. City Paper, Phil. Weekly.) I usually get a kick out of the BAD reviews, and the ways they find to trash Crimson (many of which have become quotes of the day in my long ongoing Crimson diaries) (i.e. "Prog Rock Pond Scum!!") but we haven't found any bad reviews of the Bruford Levin cd or live show. Yet!


"Crimson stars turn a bright BLUE"

"They weren't pushing the envelope, they were cutting it into snowflakes before licking it."

"... The result is a rich program of shifting rhythms and textures that, in its sonic surprises and haunting trumpet lines, is dream-like."

"Trumpeter Chris Botti adds a rebirth-of-the-cool desolation that summons the specter of Miles Davis onto the disc.."

"It's a safe bet that there will be none of the pseudo-jazz jam-band noodling that often infects some modern progressive rock."

"on the ... Chapman Stick,suggesting a spidery typist with his two handed dance on the fretboard"

"Cerulean Sea: ... while singing a drone soon lost to the cacophonous layers created with Bruford and guitarist David Torn
... where Levin evoked Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" with his sonourous bowing on upright bass before Torn bent vibrato into fractured screams."

"the group's improvisations grew into another delirious ebb and flow..."

"Bruford & Levin have played together in King Crimson and its various reincarnations and spinoff projects, a relationship that has lasted longer than most musical marriages"

"Levin is a net-savvy performer who has long kept a digital tour diaries... and these dispatches from the front have offered opportunities to see the men behind the curtain. .. Entries might include reviews of places that serve his favorite road elixir, espresso."

"Brief rhythmic interludes punctuate the disc the way scenic overlooks break up a long mountain drive"

"Fin de Siecle...the Stick and drum interplay is ominous and menacing, a walk through an unfamiliar forest that finds an unsteady calm with a trumpet-bass duet in the middle, then dissolves into uncertainty again. It's a powerful rhythmic grinder until Botti floats in with muted trumpet wails, like the bleats of emotionally unstable bighorn sheep."

"David Torn's loop wizardry infuses each song with different flavors. On "Presidents Day" there are wails of his "squoze-cat loops" and the eerie dissonance of what he calls the "shattered electric bouzouki" Botti is the wild card performer, a young, good looking horn player whose rapport with the crowd makes a profound difference in the band's live show"

"Teetering between macabre and buoyant, the boys in Bruford/Levin... make joyful hay of avant-prog rock. Utilizing the looped guitar menace... blossom into seismic mood swings."

"On "Cerulean Sea" and "Cobalt Canyons" they follow the Crimson way with Bruford shifting from the militaristic precision to cross-cut polyrhythms and Torn angrily tearing the ass out of his guitar."

"They play Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots, jabbing jovially into each others textures." ... "By the time you reach "President's Day" - clattering about with jittery percussion, elephant approximations and overzealous brass - you'll conclude that Bruford / Levin's algebraic sounds can be a hoot."

"And all feature explosive percussion volleys from Bruford pulled off with military precision, and odd sounds from donkey-like braying to ecstatic squeals from Torn's guitar and tape loops. But most of all, "Upper Extremities" contains the exotic sounds of four extremely talented musicians playing off each other -- and having fun."

---





Type: Official David Torn Album
Record Label: Papa Bear/DGM
Serial / Inventory Number: DGM0002
Year of release: 2000
Date of recording: --- 1998
Available Format(s): CD


David Torn - Guitars, Loops, Oud
Tony Levin - Basses, Stick
Bill Bruford - Drums
Chris Botti - Trumpet


Produced by Tony Levin.
Recording Engineer: Robert Frazza
Mixed by Robert Frazza and David Torn using Emagic Logic Platinum software
Mastered by David Torn at the Loop Pool, Bearsville, New York using the Linn HiFi playback system.
Art Direction by Megan Denver.
Cover photo by Yuka Fujii.
Booklet and package photos by Tony Levin, Mark Swidler, Yuka Fujii.


Papabear (PBCD4)
UK/USA 2000

Bill Bruford, drums; Tony Levin, basses, stick; David Torn, guitars, loops, oud; Chris Botti, trumpet

Bob Eichler:
This live two disc set documents the tours undertaken in 1998 by Bruford and Levin's edgy jazz band. Recorded at three venues in April, and another three in December, the tracks are edited together to sound like one continuous concert. For example, disc one begins with a warmup improv recorded at the Orion Studios show in Baltimore (which I was lucky enough to see), with Bruford starting things off with a steady bass drum thump and the other bandmembers arriving one by one and gradually joining in. After eight minutes, this shifts seamlessly into "Etude Revisited" - a version that was recorded almost eight months later in Chicago.
Overall, the live versions lack a little of the intensity of the studio album (as Torn's guitar break on "Etude Revisited" demonstrates - it's nice here, but on the studio album it practically rips your head off), but this album makes up for any flaws by including four new tracks (all live improvs?) that weren't on the original disc. There are also a few other nice touches, like Botti's smoothly smoky trumpet on "Deeper Blue", and Levin's flashy bass work on "Cobalt Canyons".
In addition to the BLUE material and improvs, there's also a live version of Torn's "3 Minutes of Pure Entertainment" from his Cloud About Mercury album (which featured Bruford and Levin). Apparently Bill wasn't happy with the way that album turned out - in introducing this piece, he jokingly takes Torn to task for the undermixed drums on his album.
The bonus "remix" song "Outer Blue" is OK, but nothing to write home about. It gets a little annoying in spots, sounding like a radio that is picking up two stations simultaneously - one playing a BLUE song and one playing bad techno.
All in all, I'd recommend getting the studio BLUE album before picking this one up. If you really enjoy that disc (or if you saw the band play live and enjoyed it) then this live album is a pretty safe bet. On the other hand, if you're expecting something that sounds just like King Crimson, you may be surprised.





Bruford Levin Upper Extremities;Blue Nights

"Upper Extremities" contains the exotic sounds
of four extremely talented musicians playing
off each other -- and having fun."



With this CD, Tony Levin and Bill Bruford present music unlike any you've ever heard.

It begins with the thundering rhythm section of progressive rock band King Crimson and adds the avant garde guitar riffs and distant planet loops of David Torn. Mix in the cool jazz sound of Chris Botti's trumpet - turn it upside down in a blender, and you've got Bruford Levin Upper Extremities - a CD that breaks through boundaries, nearly defying description.

B.L.U.E. toured the U.S., April 13-19, 1998



Cerulean Sea. Bruford - drums; Levin - bass w. funk fingers, vocal; Torn - guitar, brokenbird, hysterium & slicer loops. Features other-worldly loops, a vocal drone with moving overtones, and incessant 8th notes from Levin's funk-fingered bass. All come together to create a strong mood that is gradually overtaken by Bruford's unique soloistic cross rhythms.

Interludes. Bruford playing with sticks and mallets on derelict piano in Levin's garage

Original Sin. Botti - trumpet; Bruford - drums; Levin - stick; Torn - guitar sphere. This features a more accessible side. This Bill Bruford composition comes with a smooth groove, albeit in 5/4, under the cool muted trumpet of Chris Botti.

Etude Revisited. Botti - trumpet; Bruford - drums; Levin - stick; Torn - guitar sphere. The listener is dropped into a restaurant - The Gypsy Wolf Cantina in Woodstock - where the band recorded its own dinner, joking and discussing cross rhythms. The track cuts right to a full band groove, then back for dessert to the Cantina.

A Palace of Pearls (on a blade of grass). Botti - trumpet; Bruford - electronic percussion, synth; Levin - NS electric upright bass; Torn - guitar & noir loops.

Fin de Siecle. Botti - trumpet; Bruford - drums; Levin - stick. This may become a classic known for Tony's playing of the Stick - it features the rare instrument that Tony has become famous for.

DrumBass. Bruford, Levin - drumbass. Features Bill and Tony playing simultaneously on the same instrument - a unique upright bass made from an American Indian drum.

Cracking the Midnight Glass. Bruford - drums; Levin - NS bass; Torn - barking gtr, light-industry dementia.

Torn DrumBass. Bruford, Levin - drumbass; Torn - National slide guitar.

Thick with Thin Air. Bruford - electronic percussion; Levin - vocal; Torn - baby acoustic & National slide gtrs, e-bow, throat & moat loop.

Cobalt Canyons. Bruford - drums; Levin - stick; Torn - wack gtr, big vile winged things.

Deeper Blue. Botti - trumpet; Bruford - drums; Levin - NS bass; Torn - high atmos, bubbleslid gtr.

President's Day. Botti - trumpet; Bruford - drums, electronic percussion; Levin - stick; Torn - gtr sphere, squoze-cat loops, shattered electric bouzouki.




Though Bill Bruford and Tony Levin have collaborated for many years, as a drummer and bassist will, this is the first voice given over totally to their creative will. Together, Bill and Tony have, for a long time, been the engine that propels the progressive rock group King Crimson. Bruford's drums and Levin's bass have also been heard together powering music of YES, Steve Hackett, David Torn, Al Dimeola, the upcoming CD of U.K., and a variety of progressive projects.

Individually, Bruford has an impressive list of credits - YES, Genesis, U.K., Crimson, his own Earthworks, and others.

Tony Levin has toured and/or recorded with Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd, John Lennon, Lou Reed, and many more. His two projects on Papa Bear Records - World Diary and From the Caves of the Iron Mountain - have etched new ground musically and carved out a place in the industry for the company.

Guitarist David Torn has been recording his own avant garde projects for some time - a leader in the field of new instrumental music, he's much in demand at European festivals. His album Cloud About Mercury featured Bruford and Levin and has become a classic of the genre.

Chris Botti, known for his trumpet playing with Paul Simon and Blue Nile, has found himself at the top of the jazz charts with his solo releases, including, most recently, Midnight Without You.