Echolyn - Stars And Gardens Volume 4
Performance 
Production 
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Echolyn - Stars And Gardens Volume 4
Performance |
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Last summer I started tuning into Delicious Agony Progressive Rock Radio Internet station every time I would sit down at my computer to write these reviews or do some surfing. I REALLY started getting into progressive rock a lot more around 1992, after being blown away by Dream Theater's Images And Words album, whose "Pull Me Under" actually got a little radio and MTV exposure back then. Figure the odds now a days. In the last few years I have been discovering a wealth of fantastic new prog-rock music thanks to great sites like Delicious Agony, and the many great music review sites on the web. Echolyn are one of those bands that I have been introduced to recently. I consider them new, but they have actually been around since 1990 and have released seven studio albums. So why have I never heard of them until just last year? The likes of Ashley Simpson, Limp Bizkit, and Ludacris - that's the hell why! Since I have been able to listen to damn near all of their songs for free the last few months, thanks to Internet radio and the many free MP3 downloads Echolyn offers on their website, I figured I owed it to them to pick up their new concert DVD - even though it cost me a whopping 35 bucks! Stars And Gardens Volume 4 (there are no volumes 1-3, by the way) is a lofty two-disk package with a total running time of about 210 minutes. The concert portion alone runs a little over two hours, helped in part by their performance of the entire 49-minute "Mei", from their most recent album of the same name. I was excited about watching this DVD, because it was thrilling to stumble upon such a good band, with so many fantastic songs, that I had no idea existed until only last year. The concert footage was filmed May 25th, 2003, at the Sellersville Theater in their home state of Pennsylvania, and features 11 songs that span their entire career. Unfortunately, right from the very first song, I knew all was not going to be well with the production of this DVD. Most of the production duties were handled by Echolyn guitarist and vocalist Brett Kull. The video editing literally looks like Kull and his helpers were sitting around in the studio, and after having indulged in some really good LSD said, (imagine Tommy Chong's Cheech and Chong voice) "hey man, why don't we add all kinds of trippy, psychedelic video affects over all of the song performances - yeaaahh, people will really dig that man." Of course I'm only kidding when I imply that these guys had to be on drugs to produce this outcome - of course - but I'm afraid it is that bad. This was a damn shame too, because the band's performance was simply fantastic. These guys had no problem reproducing the complex arrangements of most of their songs, and usually improved upon the studio versions by interjecting loads of great improvisation. The show closer "Shades", from their debut album, was nearly twice as long as the original, for instance. The thing I love about Echolyn is that they have two equally talented, but very different sounding lead vocalists in Brett Kull and Ray Weston. Kull has the straight-forward rock vocals, and Weston has some very nuanced, and expressive vocals that give the band their unique sound. The show gets of to a great start, musically speaking, with back to back songs, "Texas Dust" and "Swingin’ The Axe" from Echolyn's fantastic 2000 reunion album, Cowboy Poems Free. The highlight of the show would also come from that album in the form of "Brittany", a song about a brother dealing with the emotions of his brother having been sent off to fight in the second world war. The song is based on the true story of keyboardist Christopher Buzby's uncle who is buried over on Normandy beach, and he introduces the song and dedicates it to two girls who are currently serving over in Iraq. This performance was so good, I will forgive them for skipping my favorite song from that album, "Human Lottery". Echolyn's second set consisted of the entire 49-minute version of "Mei", which featured a six-person orchestra that the band brought out to join them. This song may take some time to grow on you, as it is very long and is extremely varied in texture and theme. I think this song would have made a much better twenty-minute epic, as there are many parts that are absolutely brilliant, while other sections bog down significantly. There were already numerous reviews of this DVD out on the web before I got around to it, and I am quite perplexed at how almost non of them even mention the atrocious video editing. I went back and watched it again just to make sure I wasn't imagining things or just overreacting. NOPE! I'm not exaggerating when I say that there is probably more video featuring non-performance images than of the actual live performance. You've got the entire bag of tricks: purposely blurred shots, negative exposure, hideous graphics, cheesy fade in/outs, slow motion, and numerous other unexplainable effects. This easily joins Yes' Keys To Ascension, and Ozzy Osbourne's Live & Loud in the worst-edited-video hall of fame. The only decent effect was when they alternated between some mid-90's performance footage of the band, back when they were still long-haired hippy people, during the performance of "My Dear Wormwood". The video was supposedly shot using six, HD, 16mm, BETA SP cameras, but the picture is not very impressive. It is often very shaky and blurry (not purposely). The stage lighting was very minimal, so the picture was somewhat dark and murky. Only a PCM stereo audio mix is provided, but it is excellent. All of the instruments are clear and defined, and the vocals are mixed perfectly. There is an entire extra disk worth of bonus material, which includes band interviews and studio and rehearsal footage from the band's entire career. If you are not bothered by this ridiculous type of video editing that I have described here, then you should love this DVD, because the music is certainly terrific. For the rest of us, we'll just have to crank up the volume and change the picture to a Simpsons' re-run, or something just as entertaining. Reviewed by Paul M. Roy - February 2005 Update - Michael Ostrich, the webmaster of echolyn.com, recently filled me in on where the "Volume 4" comes from in the title of Stars And Gardens. It turns out that Volume 2 is a recording from a show in Piscataway, NJ (which is no longer for sale), and Volumes 1 and 3 are from other recordings from that timeframe (Nearfest, Orion Studios). Thanks Michael. |
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Technical Details |
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Audio Transfer |
Video Transfer |
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Set List |
Performers |
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Running Time: 128 Minutes |
DVD Release Date - December 2004 |
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Purchase this DVD at CD Baby |