ROCK QUOTES “Thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years — this one’s on me.” As Reznor's album 'The Slip' was released for free on NIN.com. (05-06-08) "That's My Pig..." As a Giant Inflatable Pig got away during a Roger Waters concert at the Coachella Music festival. (04-30-08) "Everyone has made Axl out to be this crazy person...But having been in a band with these guys for five and a half years, I'm not so sure that it was all Axl's fault." Scott Weiland has some insight into the demise of Guns n' Roses. (04-20-08) We're used to reading in promotional materials for bands (and in reviews) lists of influences, or lists of bands that a new band sounds like. However, rarely is a band so explicit as Dirt Jake Replicas, who claim they deliberately searched their country (the United States, that is) for musicians to create a specific style of art rock that is influenced by, Pink Floyd, Tool, and The Mars Volta. With such a forthright statement, the band necessarily directs the listener's (and, in this case, the reviewer's) attention to those elements in its sound that reveal specific indebtedness to those touchstones. But you know what? I'm happy to say that in this case, I won't find it necessary to write a trace-the-allusion review. As a huge fan of Floyd and The Mars Volta who has also never even begun to understand Tool, I'm pleased not to have to mention those bands again except in passing, because Dirt Jake Replicas really have a sound all their own that needn't be seen as owing more to their influences than as the kind of inspiration every young band needs. The first thing I need to say is that, while this album is made up not of songs but of compositions (I mean, look at the times: the shortest track is eight minutes long!), and thus you can rightly expect something other than verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus, never did I find myself becoming annoyed or distracted, diffuse though the compositions are. A bit miraculously, this young band manages to keep things interesting through the course of tracks that run up to twelve minutes. I think the most compelling thing about the compositions is the vocals, provided sometimes alternately but most often simultaneously by Dakota Max and Ashley Beard. Whatever the instruments are doing at any point, the vocals sort of do their own things, sometimes (when Max and Beard are singing simultaneously) very different things. But both vocalists have appealing and expressive voices, so that we're always drawn in, wondering what they'll do next. And just what is it that the instruments are doing? For the most part, they're creating an atmosphere. Guitarist Joshua Ash, bassist Adam Gurr, and drummer Julius Panimdim weave (along with vocalist Ashley Beard's piano) entrancing soundscapes for the vocals to float above. On most tracks, the percussion is what most stands out from the background, although, especially on such tracks as [Part I], Gurr's brightly recorded bass also plays a significant role. Ash mostly uses his guitar to embellish, more often than not with delicate chords or slow lead lines, but he's not much interested in traditional solos or rhythm parts. All the instruments are sublimated to the total sound of each composition, all directed towards a single effect, and so it's hard to single out individual performances; the highest praise I can give the musicians, in fact, is that one doesn't so much hear the specific instruments as grasp the totality of each piece. To my taste, some the best parts of this album (and I'll refer not to whole compositions but to this bit or that bit of one or another composition) are those that steer a little more closely to traditional song structures. Take for example several minutes in the middle of Gorde. One could almost excerpt those three or four minutes and call them a slightly eccentric song on their own. Here perhaps more than anywhere else on the album, with drums, guitar, and bass playing a comparatively simple chord progression on top of which Max's and Beard's vocals, Beard's providing high harmony, soar gorgeously, we appreciate the band's grasp of melody. A similar sort of passage can be heard about one-quarter of the way through [Part II], the band grooving along for a couple of minutes in a mini-song within the larger composition. But the bulk of most of the tracks consists of pleasantly torturous shifts of tempo, dynamics, and instrumentation. If you like that sort of thing, and I believe most fans of progressive rock do, this band provides challenges that are both slightly familiar and wholly original. My one significant criticism is that the compositions are perhaps too little differentiated one from another. Even after quite a few listenings, I would not be able to tell you, if you played me a snippet of one or another track, which one it was ? far from it. That is, while the album works very well as a unified whole, its individual parts are not specifically memorable. But with pieces ranging from eight to twelve minutes, the band?s clearly not going for the catchy hit single here, and, as I?ve suggested, though the album and its component tracks are very long, the band repays the attention it demands. Returning finally to those three groups mentioned at the outset, I?d say that certainly any fans patient enough to listen to and appreciate Pink Floyd, Tool, and The Mars Volta will also find a lot to like here. Gerald Wandio - DPRP.NET Dirt Jake Replicas can be found on the web at www.dirtjakereplicas.com. RAR NEWS Brown Haven was featured on the statewide AK radio program on February 17th 2008. Visit out Radio section of this site or just CLICK HERE to download our available MP3 here on Rock Alaska Records. (02/17/07) Brown Haven have released four tracks on our MP3 page. Download them and give a listen to the whole mp3 and share them with friends. Click HERE to download four available MP3's here on Rock Alaska Records. (10/30/07) Dirt Jake Replicas' self-titled CD has been released. Recorded at Seattle's Hype Schwartz studio, this endeavor is the talk of the town. Click HERE to download four available MP3's here on Rock Alaska Records. Click HERE to get the RAR CD Review. (10/05/07)

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