CS PLANS ALBUM:
A Message from your sliphorn ambassador, Matt Musselman

It's a sad but true fact that the cats in the Celestial Sliphorns have been working their tails off for me for almost a year now, playing rehearsals and writing charts, for very little financial reward.   Over this time, the group has grown in leaps and bounds to a point where I couldn't have conceived before.  However, the only recording of the group so far is the demo recorded in May of 2003.  As fine as that disc was at the time, the group is at a higher level now which is in dire need of documentation.

Thus, this spring, I'm hauling the group's sorry behinds into the studio to record a full-length album -- a "real" album, if you will -- in which we can showcase the new directions and dimmensions are finding.  Basically, we wants to record an album, and we wants to record a good-un.  The albulm, under the working title of "Wow Out," should presumably be finished by mid summer.

My fellow horn-man Brian Keegan has been working on some hip stuff which I would like to make a large portion of the album.  His work deals with odd meters and stylistic elements which give a very interesting sound, especially with the two-trombone instrumentation.  "What's New?" and "Afternoon in Paris" showed his arranging prowess well on the demo but we are currently working on longer, more developed works which really show off the full power of his writing.  His tunes "Whoa!!"  and "Fushigi" are difficult but it's the tentative title track, the 7/4 kicker "Wow Out" that will really be the hardest to put together.

I have been working on some new material myself, some of which is standard and some of which is a change of pace from our normal repertoire.  Recently, I completed work on several transcriptions including "Dancing on the Grave" by Bob Brookmeyer and an arrangement Benny Goodman's "Soft Winds" by J.J. Johnson and Al Grey.  These are intended more for live performances than the recording, however.

For the recording, I'm adapting several non-jazz tunes to the Sliphorns format.  Brian and I were listening to a great deal of Radiohead recently and found the depth of their compositions so remarkable that we thought it would be awesome to play some of their stuff with the Sliphorns.  So far, I am working on "Paranoid Android" and Brian has plans for "The Tourist."  I'm also working on several compositions of my own right now that are somewhat different.

We're always searching for the "next thing" to play but I think we're headed in the right direction and that "Wow Out" is going to turn out pretty damn good!

-Matt