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The Six Parts Seven |
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The Six Parts Seven are very patient men. Spend some time with their three full-length players and you'll be convinced of it. Since brothers Allen and Jay Karpinski started the band in 1995, Ohio's finest instrumental outfit has worked to build stunning musical landscapes based wholly on the principles of melody and restraint. The band is careful to avoid the early grave of mediocrity that plagues so many instrumental bands, adding intricate and essential touches to their trigui tar, drums and bass setup (a hear tbreaking lap steel , the understated backbone of a grand piano, subtle and tasteful samples). Nothing is exploited, and the complete package is congruent and sure, boasting a maturity smart enough to not choke the very necessary space where the songs live and breathe. The Six Parts Seven have perfected their signature lush and leading compositions, leaving listeners dazzled by fresh sonic additions to the independent rock cannon and haunted by a ful ly inescapable moodiness. The Six Parts Seven became connected to Burnt Toast Vinyl while touring with roster artist Denison Witmer in spring 2002. Label owner Scott Hatch alternated between daytime Florida spring training baseball games and nighttime shows, becoming friends with the band and proposing a one-sided LP release. Later in 2002, The Six Parts Seven played parts on Witmer's Philadelphia Songs album released on Burnt Toast Vinyl and toured with him again in Spring 2003. Now, in 2004, the final result, The Attitudes of Collapse, finally finds its way to retail outlets. The one-sided LP features 3 brand new songs and a fourth song that was previously recorded and released, but was revamped and rerecorded for this release. Though piano parts have been used by The Six Parts Seven in the past, the songs on The Attitudes of Collapse one-sided LP make heavier use of the piano to carry melodies, shifting the band's sound in a more focused and refined direction. Piano parts are fundamental to both "From California to Houston by Lightspeed" and "On Marriage" and the result is more restrained and refined than other releases. The shifting dynamics are still present, but tweaked to be less rambunctious. The repetitive use of spoken samples in "From California to Houston by Lightspeed" is as close as the band gets to actually adding vocals to their instrumental songs themselves. The title track drops the piano in favor of warm lap steel warbles, light drum beats and cymbal crashes, and layered guitar and bass parts in their signature style. "Song of Impossible Things" dist i l ls the chord progression of the traditional "Amazing Grace" with unbelievable interpretation that makes the song wholly theirs, perhaps a successful result to which the song title alludes. |
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