TOTEM> is a noise rock free improvisation trio that ventures from walls of sound to exploring microscopic sound worlds. With guitarist Bruce Eisenbeil, bassist Tom Blancarte and drummer Andrew Drury this trio makes music that is fresh, energetic and at the frontiers of understanding. TOTEM> has been influenced by paradoxes and extremes, adverse circumstances and technology – both primitive and futuristic. TOTEM> has been likened to a combination of the Jimi Hendrix trio, Evan Parker, and phonographic hisses and pops.
Trevor Hunter (New Music Box, American Music Center) for voting Solar Forge one of the Top 10 Releases for 2008 in ALL styles of music. He's got us in company with Elliott Carter, Punch Brothers, Elliot Sharpe and Keeril Makan!
Pico (SomethingElse.com) for voting Solar Forge the BEST Whack Jazz CD of 2008!
Stuart Broomer (All About Jazz—New York, pointofdeparture.org) and Phil Freeman (The Wire, Village Voice) for voting Solar Forge one of the Top 10 new Jazz Releases for 2008.
TOM BLANCARTE–Tom Blancarte is a bassist, improvisor and composer living and working in New York City. He has performed his music across North America, Europe and Japan. His primary focus is on improvisational music and finding new roles for the bass in a variety of musical contexts. He is an active performer in a variety of ensembles in the New York area, his most active groups being the hyperactive duo Sparks with trumpeter Peter Evans, Dave Smith's Who Put The Bad Mouth On Me, and the Peter Evans Quartet. Originally from Austin, Texas, he began playing electric bass as a teenager, falling in love with rock and metal music. He quickly found himself performing in many rock and blues bands in Austin, and soon after heard jazz and the upright bass, which is his primary instrument today. He received a Jazz Studies degree from the University of North Texas, where he studied with Jeff Bradetich and Lynn Seaton.
ANDREW DRURY–drummer/composer, mostly in free improvisation and jazz, sometimes in and around pop, klezmer, new music, performance art, street performance. He has toured in homeless shelters throughout Indiana, jammed with inmates in maximum security prisons in Connecticut, made a giant pachinko-like instrument with circular sawblades and marbles and played it with 10,000 people at the Seattle Children's Museum, performed and led workshops on Isla Ometepe, Nicaragua, and for six months in 2000 was artist-in-residence with the Oneida Nation on their reservation in Wisconsin. He has drummed on plastic buckets, screamed, and made faces with kids of all ages in over 700 workshops across the U.S., including five year olds with autism, 'at risk' teens throughout New York City, twenty something graduate students at the Columbia University School of Social Work, as well as 30 something to 70 something public school music teachers. A former student of Ed Blackwell, he can be heard on about 20 CDs and has worked in Europe and North America with artists such as Laura Andel, Dean Bowman, Taylor Ho Bynum, Sebastien Cirotteau, Michel Doneda, Mark Dresser, Marty Ehrlich, Peter Evans, Ken Filiano, Jason Kao Hwang, Jihae, Mazen Kerbaj, Eyvind Kang, Briggan Krauss, Adam Lane, Jessica Lurie, Wade Matthews, Myra Melford, Reuben Radding, Jane Rigler, Christine and Sharif Sehnaoui, Chris Speed, Nate Wooley, Jack Wright, Danijel Zezelj, and others.