Afro-Cuban World Jazz and Alternative Country

13 MP3 Songs
WORLD: World Fusion, COUNTRY: Country Blues



Details:
Liner Notes From Album-

Flathand 5 is not a band. Let me explain. Around 1997 I wanted to start a percussion based project.
Mostly, believe it or not, from my early influences of PiL, Killing Joke, Talking Heads, Bow Wow Wow
and my experiences in High School Marching Band. I fell in love with the big drum sound. Especially
tom toms and syncopated rhythms. Additionally my wife Fanovitch had turned me onto African percussion music.
She had studied first hand while living in a small village in Burkina Faso. Listening to her play her Djembe, I was
amazed at how much sound one drum and drummer could make. Those were the seeds that grew into Flathand 5.

At around the same time, things were slowing down a bit with my band Kill Switch...Klick. We had just fin-
ished our second U.S. tour and I really wanted to focus more on my upstart label iRegular Records (later Go-Kustom).
I talked to a percussionist friend of mine and got four drummers over to my studio - Jeremy Sever, Dan Weber, Jeff
Rodgers & Jeff Venturo for four recording sessions. We started recording basic tracks, sometimes as percussion jams, but
always with definite verse/chorus structures. The drummers would trade off on drum kits, hand percussion or "found"
percussive instruments (i.e. "I found it in D.A.'s garage- now lets beat on it!"). Having worked for years with drum loops
and drum sequencer tracks, it seemed the logical way to start a "percussion" album.

Over the ensuing years, I slowly built the songs up from these basic rhythm tracks, letting the "vibe" of the
drums guide the song structure. Two of these percussion tracks became the D.A. Sebasstian & The Inner Demons tunes
Isabella Rossellini & Evil Undead Girlfiend. As an ongoing project the finished songs were not mastered until 2005.
That's almost a decade from the projects inception! Additional musicians included didgeridoo player Steve Hodovance,
upright bassist James Whiton, additional percussionists Susanna Meyer & Fanovitch Sebasstian, vocalist Ricardo Acevedo
( who recorded his tracks long distance in Austin, Texas ), vocalist Becky Thatcher, vocalist Melene Marie Brown and Kit
Drummer Rob Leland. Also adding their own completed songs from later recording sessions were Fanovitch's band -
OmBili Troupe.

The name "flathand" comes from a hand percussion technique. The number "five" comes from the initial
number of drummers (four), plus myself (the haphazard overseer). This CD is a kind of compilation/concept album
celebrating percussion and rhythm. The styles range from Jazz and Rock to Industrial and World- yet hopefully in-
voke a feeling of coherence. From the beginning, nothing about this albums musical direction was "preplanned."
In a sense Flathand 5 was the musical fruit grown from the rhythmic seeds we planted many years ago.
- D.A. Sebasstian