Garage a Trois

Looking back on my posts, I realize it's been a long time since I've written about a band that I like, so here it goes.  Also, Al and I were out on a school assignment tonight, so there was no Behind the Beat.  Sorry!

Garage a Trois (apparently also known as GAT) is a band that I have known about for a while, but never really started listening to until a few weeks ago.  I first checked out their music when Behind the Beat was doing a show where Al and I were supposed to find songs by bands we had never heard of before.  Well, I got a little lazy during the week before the show, and I didn't actually find many new bands.  I took the easy way out and just looked for some of my favourite artists' "other bands".  Stanton Moore has been one of my favourite drummers since the first time I heard Galactic, so I figured one of his other bands would be a safe bet.


I went on YouTube and was instantly impressed by GAT.  How often do you hear someone rock a vibraphone like Mike Dillon can?  Not often, that's for sure.  I was drawn in by their hooky vibe riffs, unconventional drum beats and wild saxophone sounds.  And I do mean wild.

GAT is a quartet made up of Moore, Dillon, a dude called Skerik on sax and keyboardist Marco Benevento.  For four people, these guys make a lot of sound!  They started out as a trio in 1998 (Moore, Skerik and 8-string guitarist Charlie Hunter), when they recorded a (mostly) improvised EP called Mysteryfunk.  The studio time was initially meant to record Moore's debut album, All Kooked Out! but he managed to record two albums in that time.  Both albums recorded during this session were done live-off-the-floor with no overdubs.

They added Dillon to the lineup and took the show on the road.  They became pretty popular pretty quickly, probably due to their ability to mix a variety of genres, from jazz to electronic, into an original, eargasmic sound.  They recorded their next two albums (Emphasizer in 2003, and Outre Mer in 2005) with this lineup, both of which were more produced and planned than the first EP.


Hunter left the band shortly after (my minimal research hasn't answered "why?" for me, yet) and they continued touring with a number of bodies filling the spot.  In December of 2007, Benevento became a permanent member of the band.  The current lineup recorded Power Patriot in 2009, which I recently ordered from Amazon (good luck finding a GAT album in Winnipeg) and it hasn't come out of my car's CD player since.  I drive a lot.


Check out some vids, yo!  These are all from the same concert, during New Orleans Jazz Fest 2010, at the Louisiana Music Factory.  All the songs they play are from Power Patriot.  There's a whole bunch more videos from that venue that are worth checking out in the related section on YouTube.


A couple of my favourite songs from the album, Electric Door Bell Machine and Fragile.  I have to make a video montage for school, and I'm using Fragile for my background music.  I'll post it on here in a couple months when it's done.




Dugout




The title track itself!  Power Patriot