HB3 - The Veldt
2009, Zegnotropic Records

HB3 is setting music free with a sound that combines organic electric instruments with electronic sounds and effects in fashion that might just be unique. Bridging the gaps from Charlie Parker to Eric Johnson to Yes and through Ravi Shankar on the way back, HB3 paints with a broad musical brush that's as interesting as it is hard to predict. HB3's latest album, The Veldt, is loosely based on the Ray Bradbury short story of the same name. HB3 looks to create a musical place of pure imagination and creativity both as a refuge from the world and a means to understand it.

The Veldt opens with Overture (Behold The Sea), sounding a bit like Mannheim Steamroller with Eric Johnson on guitar and Rick Wakeman sitting in on keys. Keyboard, guitar and piccolo bass pass the major and minor themes back and forth in a composition with theatrical implications. Pay Me Pray Me is described by HB3 as a prayer to Eros; the song itself is hard to decipher on the lyric side but plays like a very repressed alt-rocker with progressive tendencies in the chorus. The Veldt plays off of African rhythms and a somewhat demented bit of song construction to create a fantastical vision that crosses cultural and musical boundaries with each sonic breath. Perhaps the most interesting interlude in the song is a bass solo that sounds like it has been amplified with some electronic effects.

Casual Betrayal sews together threads of Brit Rock, Folk and 1980's keyboard-driven New Wave; the song explores the lack of honor in modern society and how it is passed from generation to the next like a social disease. HB3 manages to sound quite a lot like 54-40's Neil Osborne on this track. Manimal! combines Hip-Hop and Electronica with Horror-movie style themes. Manimal! is all over the musical map and is better heard than described. Harmonium takes Dennis DeYoung-style keyboard work (you might pick out distinct similarities to the opening of Fooling Yourself) and builds into something reminiscent of some of the experimental soundtrack work of the late 1980's. Fans of Giorgio Moroder will find themselves on familiar territory for much of the song.

On 007, HB3 pays tribute to Isao Tomita with a composition that runs the gamut Sci-Fi and Space Age novelty. Computers and spaceships as they may have been sonically imagined in the 1960's and 1970's reign here. Close But No Cigar is one of the most intriguing compositions here; I spent a dozen or so trips through this song trying to come up with a "sounds like" comparison and couldn't find anything that quite fit. The closest I came is to think of Pink Floyd as produced by William Ackerman. The Veldt closes out with Lion & Lamb which turns out to be something of a musical reprise of the entire album, in turns. Most or all of the major thematic elements of the individual songs come back in Lion & Lamb; a sort of musical yang and yin that compels the album while drawing all of the pieces together.

It's rare to come across a recording that's wholly original. HB3 achieves this not by fearing or shunning his influences, but by embracing them wholeheartedly and using them to loving create new ideas with old phrases. In a medium governed by eight basic notes it is often the music musicians themselves consume that drives their creations. HB3 takes all of these musical ideas that have entered his mind over the years and resets them as something wholly new and original. The Veldt is brilliant.

Rating: 4.5 Stars (Out of 5)

http://wildysworld.blogspot.com/2009/08/review-hb3-veldt.html

A short story by Ray Bradbury has provided the inspiration for The Veldt, the latest release from Zappa-inspired LA based alt rockers HB3, a three piece consisting of HB3 on vocals and bass, Steve Casa on guitar and Mario Lackner on drums. This is an album that crosses all musical boundaries from electronica and hip-hop to also incorporate elements of jazz fusion, African rhythms and prog. Parts are heavily distorted with random interjections of lyrics that thematically head off in a sinister direction ("Manimal", "Haunted Houses"). For the most part the cosmic jamming provides a tasteful and soothing aural experience ("Qu'est-ce Que C'est, Funky?") and the extended keyboard intro to "Harmonium" is a 70's prog rock fans delight but ultimately the overabundance of electronic effects suggest a Giorgio Moroder fixation within the band that is not always a good thing. "Green Fire In The Forest" arrives late in the day to offer an appealing ethereal soundscape that will delight aficionados of Mike Oldfield but this is one where "try before you buy" would be well advised and the majority of the album can be heard at HB3's MySpace site.

Track Listing
Overture (Behold the Sea)
Pay Me Pray Me
The Veldt
Haunted Houses
Casual Betrayal
Qu'est-ce Que C'est, Funky?
Manimal!
Harmonium
007
Close But No Cigar
Green Fire in the Forest
Lion & Lamb

Added: November 18th 2009
Reviewer: Dean Pedley
Score:

http://www.seaoftranquility.org/reviews.php?op=showcontent&id=8528

HB3 - HB3 Plays The Piccolo Bass
2009, Zegnotropic Records

HB3 is back. It wasn't all that long ago that we reviewed The Veldt, his fine collection of songs based loosely on the Ray Bradbury story. After such an ambitious project, HB3 wanted to create something that was simply beautiful. HB3 has played The Piccolo Bass on his last two albums and decided it was time the instrument came to the fore. The Piccolo Bass is an octave above a regular bass and an octave below standard guitar tuning. The instrument was developed by Stanley Clarke and is an amazing supple and expressive instrument in the right hands. If nothing else, HB3 Plays The Piccolo Bass proves that HB3's hands are the right ones.

HB3 opens with The Umbrellas, quickly introducing influences such as The Beatles and William Ackerman. There is a pensive feel to the song that periodically boils over into intense movement before quickly subsiding. The production serves to create an atmosphere of a room with wonderful acoustics. HB3 mimics mandolin and even lute on The Kermess, a song with roots in the Breughel painting of a medieval peasant dance. The song is a slow-build energy-wise, rising from a timid start to a sense of whirling timelessness. Haunted Houses is reinterpretation of a song from The Veldt that actually plays better here than in the original form. Stripping Haunted Houses down to its most basic form brings out the simple, subtle beauty of the melody.

Darjeeling Express is a near-eleven minute musical meditation that blends the rhythm of the rails with Indian tonal structures in surprising and pleasing ways. The sense of motion is palpable, as the impending sense of arrival each time the song slows. The key here, as it was on The Veldt, is HB3's phrasing. Regardless of what instrument he wields, HB3 seems to have innate sense for how things fit together, making even the most surprising musical turns seems as natural as breathing. Slap opens as a free-form improvisational peace that quickly degenerates into some of the most delicious slap bass work this side of Bakithi Kumalo (Paul Simon). Ariel is a meditation on female beauty, built in slowly undulating lines like the curves of a body. This is a gentle listen that's good for relaxation. HB3 closes out with Positive Venus, a conglomeration of two other tracks. HB3 took Positive Violence from his album Luminosity and married it to Venus, a previously unreleased track. The result sounds the rough cut of a movie score element. There's a real sense of life to this tune that is compelling, with an incessant rhythm underlying the plodding steps of melody.

As with The Veldt, HB3 manages the expected in unexpected ways. His phrasing through HB3 Plays The Piccolo Bass is flawless. Each song has its own life and energy, cavorting more like children than songs. In the middle is HB3 with his easy smile and cool demeanor, scoring the world around us like he knows all the answers. HB3 Plays The Piccolo Bass is probably a niche album, but it’s a splendid offering that should not be overlooked.

Rating: 4 Stars (Out of 5)

http://wildysworld.blogspot.com/2009/11/review-hb3-hb3-plays-piccolo-bass.html