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hi everybody. we’re home safe and sound from our west coast odyssey. it’s nice to be at home at the proper altitude.
our first stop was beautiful missoula, montana where we first saw a surfer riding a continuous wave in the river and later played a show at the palace. it was ladies night and the feeling was right. we enjoyed some lovely music and played jenga.
next we stopped in seattle, washington where we enjoyed the moist weather, went thrift store hopping, ate rainier cherries from pike place market and took a ferry to bainbridge island. oh, and we also played a really fun show at the mars bar with some amazingly talented folks, including troubletown and the kindness kind, and ate some amazingly delicious food from the cafe venus next door.
we traveled next to portland, oregon where everyone deeply sniffed roses in the experimental rose garden and napped in the sun while i caught up with dear old friends. we drank as many cups of stumptown coffee as we could and wandered through powell’s before playing a show at the towne lounge with some lovely and gracious folks, porches and autopilot is for lovers. it was a pleasant way to spend an evening.
we went on to san francisco, california and enjoyed perfect weather and cocktails on a rooftop deck in the mission. we wandered over the whole city and finished the day in golden gate park before playing another satisfying show with some great bands, including tiny television, helene renaut and indian valley line, at the hotel utah.
we drove all night to salt lake city, utah to make it to KRCL, a fantastic community radio station who was gracious enough to host us in their studio. we gobbled up some of the best mexican food ever at the red iguana (where i drank a jalapeno margarita that was so deliciously spicy it seared my throat; it was a truly religious experience) before heading the urban lounge for a show with the rocking dead horse point.
all in all, it was a fantastic trip, but we missed denver and are sure glad to be home.
NPR.org, December 7, 2007 – Bela Karoli is an unusual trio featuring upright bass, violin and accordion. The all-women group’s latest album, Furnished Rooms, is a stunning set of jazzy acoustic compositions with touches of subtle electronics. The album is filled with beautifully structured dynamics and captivating sonic twists.
The Denver-based trio explores the connection between the organic and the machine. Julie Davis’ upright bass and Carrie Breeder’s cello fill their sound with low-to-the-ground, resonating tones. The dramatic violin on their rendition of Emily Dickinson’s poem “Some Things That Fly There Be” sets an imaginatively dark soundscape.
The most noticeably electronic arrangement is TS Eliot’s “Prelude 2.” With crunching micro beats, it paints ominous images of being born in a modern, mechanical world. Cool, laid-back vocals and creeping bass add a sluggish vibe to Gershwin’s “Summertime.” Singer Julie Davis wrote most of the original lyrics on the album while riding in a car. On the featured track, “Invertebrate,” she sings evocative lyrics that fit with the album’s mechanical theme: “we are soft cells / we have metal shells.”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16972416
“Mile High City produced lots of fine music in 2007”
by John Wenzel
These are Denver Post staff writer John Wenzel’s picks for the best local CDs of 2007:
1. Bela Karoli, “Furnished Rooms” (Helmet Room Recordings)
Adjectives like “haunting, spare, gorgeous” and “otherworldly” only scratch the surface of this release from Denver’s coolest, spookiest band.
2. Born in the Flood, “If This Thing Should Spill” (Morning After Records)
Long in the making, this debut full-length asserts Born’s expertise at slipping memorable pop hooks into fierce, honest rock songs.
3. Cat-A-Tac, “Past Lies and Former Lives” (Needlepoint)
Part Lemonheads jangle, part wall-of-sound throwback, it is all melodic bliss.
4. Ian Cooke, “The Fall I Fell” (Self-released)
Talented cellist/songwriter Cooke never met a challenging time signature or Beatles-esque melody he didn’t like.
5. Kingdom of Magic, “Kingdom of Magic” EP (self-released)
This is two songs and 17 minutes worth of endless head-banging-induced neck cramps.
6. The Wheel, “Desire and Dissolving Men” (Public Service Records)
Nathaniel Rateliffe of Born in the Flood flies solo and high on this rewarding, relaxed collection.
7. American Relay, “Corn & Oil” (self-released)
The spirits of Jon Spencer and Reverend Horton Heat flow strong and deep through this power-blues duo.
8. Flobots, “Fight with Tools” (self-released)
This release is uneven, but possesses such highs as to give this crew a view of the national hip-hop landscape.
9. John Common, “Why Birds Fly” (Free School Records)
Every aspect of Common’s squirrely melodic sensibilities and unerringly tight playing and production are featured here.
10. George&Caplin, “He Really Got Through to Advertising” (Beta-lactam Ring)
A subtle ambient-rock invader that has overtaken every corner of my mental soundtrack to the apocalypse.
http://www.denverpost.com/music/ci_7816193
I love a band that does its homework, and it seems that Bela Karoli have gone for extra credit on Furnished Rooms. The Denver trio glides through 12 tracks of original material mixed with rethinkings of “Summertime” and “Old Man River,” as well as a musical interpretation of Emily Dickinson’s poem “Some things that fly there be.” (“Prelude 2” uses part of the T.S. Eliot poem that provides the album with its title.) With violin, cello, and accordion conflicting with spare electronic percussion, this is an album accordingly concerned with the recurrent machine-versus-animal question. Offbeat, jazz-inflected vocals are the liaison between strings and synthesis.
Ignoring for a moment the stark sound set Bela Karoli utilizes, the conceptual songwriting is what sets this album apart from the crowd. I’m a big fan of resetting canonical songs in different tonalities (looking at you, David Longstreth), so my thumbs go up for Bela Karoli’s rehashing of the classics, especially on “Old Man River.” All of the fierce optimism from the Show Boat version is deliberately abandoned, recontextualized as a droopy blues ballad that epitomizes the (wo)man-versus-machine theme. “Summertime” works effectively on a similar premise.
Although the retooled songs fit mostly well with the band’s original material, it’s important not to write Bela Karoli a blank check on the originality of their acoustic-electronic mix. The band acknowledges the likes of other chamber-gone-electric outfits, and it’d be shortsighted to believe that Bela Karoli’s music were entirely unique. Moreover, at least half of the originals blend meaninglessly into the others, a recurring byproduct of machine-bred music. Almost as an evasion, “Old Man River” and “Summertime” succeed partly by their exclusion of electronic percussion. One can’t help but wonder what could have been had Bela Karoli stuck even more rigorously to their old/new dichotomy rather than adjusting the album’s trajectory to specific artistic whims.
Although the concept could have been more developed, its aesthetic beauty might have been sacrificed. This is precisely what makes nearly every track on Furnished Rooms paradigmatic of avant-pop music. These 12 tracks are pop songs without the flourishes. Virtually no hooks (save for “Carnage”) and only an occasional climactic chorus remove the immediate accessibility. It’s this deliberately stripped-down nature that’s important to keep in mind as one’s Björk-conditioned ears yearn for more dynamic back beats. Anything more than the methodical click and snap would be out of place on such a decidedly bleak album.
“Margin,” the album’s finale, abandons all acoustic instruments besides vocals, sinking into a grimy, ambient state. For this, Furnished Rooms may just be a fable of machine’s domination over nature. But regardless of the interpretation, Bela Karoli’s ability to tastefully forge such a concept out of other sources is their biggest asset. None of these tracks will make it to your shower, but the band’s predilection for conceptual songwriting over the gratification of untainted chamber pop makes this a formidable record.
http://www.tinymixtapes.com/Bela-Karoli
“Can’t pin label on Bela Karoli”
By John Wenzel, The Denver Post
10/04/2007
Julie Davis turns to catch the sun from the distant front windows of Sputnik, a bar in which she has deposited herself with Bela Karoli bandmates Carrie Beeder and Brigid McAuliffe, and her sapphire eyes glint in the light.
Like Bela Karoli’s music, Davis’ effortless grace and riveting personality insist on engagement and reward it instantly.
“This band is the only thing I’ve found so far that feels like it unifies my efforts and thoughts,” said Davis, a former theater major and alumnus of the Yale Divinity School. “What I love about music is that you create the context.”
Davis’ Denver-based trio, formerly known as Bluebook and renamed after the Olympian gymnastics coach, gets fitted with all kinds of awkward tags – trip-hop, indie-folk, electro-acoustic – but the deceptively simple, intricately rendered songs stir up words like “haunted” and “gorgeous” more often than not.
When the band releases its long-awaited first album, “Furnished Rooms,” on Saturday at the Hi-Dive, it will prove both its versatility and inability to be labeled. Anyone who has experienced “Invertebrate” or “Carnage” live knows the sublime qualities of the band’s melody-drenched compositions.
“I’m interested in that space between the earth and the heavens,” Davis said, looking toward the latter.
Her band’s singularity is impressive. Few Mile High City bands sport an upright bass, electronic percussion, two women singing, violin, cello and accordion. Davis’ jazz-addled vocals seduce you into thinking the band has already spent years being famous and adored.
It helps that “Furnished Rooms,” which features cover art from Davis’ artist/furniture designer husband David Larabee, sounds like the work of an inspired, experienced band. Meticulously recorded by Randall Frazier (Helmet Room Recordings, Orbit Service), the record is a marvel of sequencing and production – to say nothing of the songs’ quality – and already a contender for the best Colorado release of 2007.
“I started working with Randall about a year ago, right around the same time we all started playing together,” Davis said, eyeing Beeder (who has played with Born in the Flood) and McAuliffe (formerly of Pee Pee). “That’s probably why it took us so long, because we had to rework the songs.”
For Davis, who had written many songs during long car rides and realized them with Cubase software in her bedroom, the studio was unfamiliar territory. The upright bass alone took five to six months to properly record, a challenge of microphone placement, tone and performance.
“It was hard to know what the sound was going to be since we had different members in the band at different times,” Beeder said. “It took a while to even get the three of us to work well together. We’re still figuring it out, really. Julie puts tons of work into her electronic backing tracks, and that’s growing and changing too.”
McAuliffe nodded and leaned into the red vinyl booth.
“Recording brought out the awkward situation of trying to figure out what we’d evolved into,” she said. “Both the process of recording and hearing the songs made us ask a lot of questions.”
The band, which has previously featured members of Born in the Flood, Porlolo and other Denver luminaries, eventually refined its sound to a crystalline, moonshine-strength spirit. Davis’ poetic lyrics flow inextricably from the music, the interplay sounding organic because it is.
“I get that same strange transcendent feeling from playing at a place like the Hi-Dive that one would from religion,” Davis said.
http://www.denverpost.com/music/ci_7076710
“Bela Karoli Puts Poetry in Motion”
What began as a solo project has evolved into a thing of beauty.
By Dave Herrera
Published: October 4, 2007
“Exceptional music …. [Furnished Rooms] is startlingly good. Mating organic instrumentation … with mechanical percussion, the act effectively conjures Thom Yorke’s dour, Eraser-era landscapes as seen through the lens of Beth Gibbons.”
Julie Davis was featured on Colorado Public Radio’s “Colorado Matters.” Use the link below to listen to the interview.
http://www.kcfr.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=94
“Nowadays, indie bands that encompass a vast spectrum of influences, specifically from eastern Europe, can be predictable. But before we flip our hipster selves onto greener pastures and begin using Beirut albums as coasters, there’s one band that sings about odd things in quirky voices, and it is doing everything right to keep music fresh and interesting. Denver’s Bela Karoli, a trio that plays an upright bass, a violin and an accordion, is standing at the freak folk precipice with decidedly spare orchestration and aloof vocals, and yet produces disarmingly beautiful and complex songs. The band’s recent release, Furnished Rooms, is a 12-song collection that straddles eastern European folk music and a modern backbeat. It’s a like a twisted version of Siouxsie and the Banshees on downers, without trying too hard.” (GG)
Bela Karoli’s “compelling mix of modern electronica with old-world acoustic music” is hard to classify, but great nonetheless.”
Bela Karoli makes “avant-garde pop that blushes with lush arrangements and intriguingly fashionable vocal pops and weaves.”
“What makes Bela Karoli feel like 21st century cafe music is…in the overall vibe they exude….Bela Karoli is more concerned with making elegant, dreamy music that’s contemporary but timeless.”—Jason Ferguson
“Drawing inspiration from Thom Yorke, Emily Dickinson, and the songs of cicadas on summer evenings, Denver’s Bela Karoli has a sound full of joyous eccentricity….The band’s musicianship and cohesion allows it to move easily though genres, textures, and moods.”—Cassie Schoon for The A.V. Club, The Onion .
“The group does a great job of establishing and maintaining a mood all their own.”—Matthew Amundsen
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