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Heath Watts and Dan Pell | Breathe If You Can

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Grass Hair Duo's MySpace Page Heath Watts MySpace Page

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United States - Pennsylvania

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Jazz: Free Jazz Avant Garde: Experimental Moods: Type: Experimental

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Breathe If You Can

by Heath Watts and Dan Pell

© Copyright - Leo Records / Leo Records (5024792050628)
Grass Hair Duo performs high energy, improvised music that paints elements of jazz, punk, rock, metal, noise, experimental, world music, and blues onto an exciting, bold, and riveting sound canvas.
Genre: Jazz: Free Jazz
Release Date: 
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Tracks

Preview all songs
  Song Share Time Download
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1. Letters
12:12 $0.40
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2. Work
7:05 $0.40
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3. 4
3:34 $0.40
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4. People
5:33 $0.40
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5. On and Off
6:08 $0.40
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6. Crutches
7:09 $0.40
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7. However
3:32 $0.40
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8. Love
5:49 $0.40
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9. Rules
5:51 $0.40
Downloads are available as MP3-320 files.

ABOUT THIS ALBUM


Album Notes
Soprano saxophonist Heath Watts was born in Butte, Montana, and now lives in Philadelphia. Watts has been influenced by a variety of sources including John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Steve Lacy, Thelonious Monk, Jimi Hendrix, The Cream, Led Zeppelin, and the Beatles, in addition toabstract visual artists Kandinsky, Picasso, and van Gogh.

Drummer Dan Pell lives in Philadelphia. He is is influenced by many musical styles and musicians including Max Roach, Cecil Taylor, John Coltrane, Elvin Jones, Captain Beefheart, and Soft Machine.

When Watts and Pell play together, they draw from their influences and skills and attempt to make each performance more powerful and musically satisfying.

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Reviews


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Glenn Astarita
All About Jazz Review
Philadelphia residents, soprano saxophonist Heath Watts and drummer Dan Pell, improvise with relentless passion here. But they uncannily combine a tight-knit vibe while simultaneously expanding their repertoire via an angular, intuitive and muscular gait. Inspired by visual artists such as Kandinsky and Picasso, the saxophonist coins his methodology, NODOT (Non-Objective Dynamically Ordered Tones). With their inaugural release for Leo Records, the artists delve into quite a bit of give-and-take exercises, supplanted by multihued free-form excursions that pack a hearty punch.

At times, Watts surfaces as a whirling-dervish, maintaining a fluid mode of attack. And to complement that notion, Pell helps drive the flow with punishing blows to his modest drum kit. It's partly about polyrhythmic fury that seamlessly morphs into vivid expressionism. Nonetheless, the musicians' breadth and scope of execution is founded upon extended solos and contracting motifs during variable metrics and a forthright game plan.

On “However,” they summon real life experiences thru the voices of their instruments by pronouncing asymmetrical sentiments consisting of angst and humor. They even crank out a mock military-progression to further entwine a sense of realism into the grand schema. Pell's prominent drumming more than compensates for the lack of a bassist.

Breathe If You Can is one of the more absorbing free-jazz releases of 2008, especially when considering the non-chordal framework. These situations do not always provide fruitful results, yet these gents perpetuate an underlying sequence of kaleidoscopic designs that spawn gobs of interest.
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