CHICAGO, IL. (Torito Bravo Records) - With his 2006, Torito Bravo Records debut NEON AND GOLD, songwriter and composer Dan Wallace proved to be one of the more original and sophisticated songwriters working today. On his newest release CULTURE OF SELF, Wallace takes his idiosyncratic Prog-Pop further, making an album that is at times more heartfelt, dynamic, sublime, chaotic and ultimately more unpredictable than his debut.
In Wallace's own words: 'Having received both extremes of extraordinary praise and harsh criticism, this time around I felt freer to be even more uninhibited.' Instead of going bigger, however, Wallace keeps it intimate: 'I wanted to stick to a basically Rock band setup. I tend to approach music with an economy of ideas, where each element of a song plays a distinct role in the overall composition. On 'Heap Variation', for example, I re-explore one of the more melodic choruses on the album using freely chromatic two and three-part counterpoint. The music is complex, but the instrumentation is pretty subtle.'
On CULTURE OF SELF, Wallace sings with a voice that's as flexible as his music is varied, and he also plays bass, keyboards and guitar (including some impressive solos, as on 'The Heap' and 'Perfect Weather for a Superhero'). He also produced the album. As on NEON AND GOLD, George Lawler supplies the drums. There are some newcomers as well: Robin Morgan sings 'I Want to Be', an almost Kurt-Weill-meets-Chopin number, while Emanuel Ban (violin/viola) and Grace Hong (oboe) play on the soundtrack-like opening and closing 'Counting'and 'Counting Backwards'.
Wallace ventured into music in his early teens, absorbing influences such as Randy Rhoads, Charlie Parker, Cacophony, and Arnold Schoenberg: 'I started writing guitar-based music from the get-go, and was obsessively studying theory, composition and music history. What I read about 20th century composers fascinated me, but I had no way of hearing their music. I just imagined what it might sound like. As I learned more and gained access to the recordings, I realized that what I was imagining was really my own music. So I began writing it down.'
Eventually, Wallace set his guitar aside: 'I wanted to compose freely. At this time my biggest influences were Dmitri Shostakovich and Frank Zappa. My chamber music was performed publicly, and I got good press as well as grant funding. By my mid 20's, however, I started paying attention to Pop-Rock music for the first time, which ironically I got into by way of Brazilian Pop, especially Caetano Veloso. This inspired me to pick the guitar up again and start writing songs. These days Wallace embraces work by artists such as David Garza, Azita and Rasputina: 'It's a great time to be making music. Artists are hugely varied and audiences are more open than ever to hearing what they have to say.'
