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Reptet's Chicken or Beef?


Johnny E

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Reptet: Chicken or Beef?

Musicians:

John Ewing (drums, percussion), Clinton Fearon (vocals), Samantha Boshnack (trumpet, flugelhorn), Nelson Bell (trombone, tuba), Izaak Mills, Christopher Credit (reeds), Paris Hurley (violin), Eyvind Kang (viola), Lori Goldston (cello), Tim Carey (bass), Lalo Bello (percussion)

Recorded: Seattle, WA, January 2008

Rating: 94/100 (learn more)

What are they putting in the coffee up in Seattle? Chicken or Beef? is one of the craziest jazz albums I've ever heard. In 2006, Earshot Jazz gave the Reptet its award for "Best Outside Jazz Group," and this 2008 release is certainly "outside jazz." Half of the tunes are outside any genre I am familiar with. They are part jazz, part classical, part serious, part parody, part free jazz, part virtuosity – and wholly entertaining. Think Frank Zappa at his wackiest getting together with Stan Kenton to beat up Spike Jones. The album's first half is actually the band playing as straight ahead as you will get from this aggregation. After that, the vocals and craziness begin. The album's title tune and most unusual cut doesn’t come close to jazz, so I cannot review it here. But it's impressively bizarre stuff.

Chicken or Beef? opens with the horn-heavy, tightly played chaos of "Danger Notes." The rhythm is jam-band in nature. The solos tend to lean toward the free school. What little texture exists is reserved for the bassist and other string players. But no sooner have I written those words than the band is off on another exploration, and the open spaces are gone. The tune's midsection is more thoughtful. It soon gives way to a heavily syncopated…and then…next… I give up! There are too many stylistic changes to keep track of. But, whoa! It ends just like that. Cool.

Like the other first-half tunes, "Danger Notes" is a well-played trick to totally unprepare you for the lovable nonsense that will be slapping you across the face in a few minutes. I doubt that even my warning will soften the blow. Need a little wakeup in life? Put this disc in your player.

Reviewer: Walter Kolosky

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All Music Guide

Chicken or Beef? - REPTET

Review by Alex Henderson

It has been argued that music cannot be abstract and funky at the same time—that one automatically cancels out the other. But thankfully, there are some musicians who refuse to be governed by either/or thinking, and the Seattle-based Reptet has a lot of fun with avant-garde jazz on Chicken or Beef?. It is rare that one hears the words "fun" and "avant-garde" in the same sentence, but in fact, fun is an important part of the equation on this early 2008 recording—which is not to say that Reptet shies away from the cerebral or the abstract. There is plenty of quirky, left-of-center experimentation on Chicken or Beef?; this isn't exactly music that one is going to hear alongside Amy Winehouse or Kelly Clarkson on a Top 40 station. But at the same time, these inside/outside performances have more playfulness and funkiness—not to mention humor—than one typically expects from avant-garde jazz. It should be noted that Reptet experienced some personnel changes between Chicken or Beef? and their last studio album Do This!; on Chicken or Beef?, drummer John Ewing leads a sextet that also includes trumpeter/flugelhornist Samantha Boshnack, trombonist Nelson Bell, saxophonists Izaak Mills and Chris Credit, and acoustic/electric bassist Tim Carey. But Ewing is clearly the one in the driver's seat—that was true on Do This! and is equally true on Chicken or Beef?—and this album's healthy balance of abstraction and fun is very much a reflection of Ewing's creative vision. It's a vision that continues to serve Ewing's band well on this engaging CD.

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Out There Monthly

Reptet: Chicken or Beef?

Warning: Even though this Seattle ensemble has a cute letter-pressed CD cover, they won't be delivering any relax-with-a-mochachino-style-jazz. This record is complex, energetic and unpredictable. (Two of the tracks here, one rock and one ska, aren't even jazz) But if bold brassy contemporary jazz is your thing, it's gonna be hard not to enjoy this album. It captures all the kinetic, experimental, electricity you'll find in their live shows and some brooding moodiness that you won't. The CD proclaims "New Squawkaphonic High Fidelity". I won't dispute that, but a couple tracks (Swanni in Particular) have beautiful melodies that kept me humming for days. ~Jon Snyder~

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El Intruso (Argentina...in Spanish) Here's a link to the original.

I dumped it into an online translator and here's what came out. If anyone can provide a better translation, I will be forever in your debt.

REPTET - Chicken or Beef?

Danger Notes, Reptet Score! , eltiT, Eve of Thrieve, Chicken of Beef? , That's Chicken or Beef, Gwand Wabbit, Fishmarket, Swanni, Kill the Air, Go Bears

Musicians:

Samantha Boshnack: trompeta, flughelhorn, voices

Nelson Bell: trombón, tuba, eufonio

Christopher Credit: saxo baritone, saxo tenor, saxo high

Izaak Mills: saxo tenor, clarinete, flute, percussion

Tim Sea turtle: contrabass, under electrical, guitar baritone

John Ewing: battery, percussion

Guests: Beautiful Lalo (percussion), Mark Oi (guitar), Tobe Stone (clarinete), Eyvind Kang (it violates), Lori Godstom (hoop), Paris Harley (violin), Clinton Fearon, Maeg Donoghgue-Williams, Sari Breznau, Kevin Hinshaw, Scott Adams, Satchmo & Jack (voices)

Monktail Record, 2008

Qualification: Dame Two

True humor begins when no longer it is taken in serious the own person (Herman Hesse)

Reptet is one of the most excellent bands of the new musical scene of the city of Seattle. In its creative plea they agree the vital substance of the tradition of the jazz, the rigorous perspective of post bop, the expressive enthusiasm of Latin music, the energetic indisposition of the indie rock, the academic protocol of contemporary classic music, the exotic loudness of folk European, the redeeming spirit of dixieland and the insatiable search of the free improvisation.

In the structural composition of the musical DNA of this sexteto, we found a bequeathed iconography of genuine rebels of the modern art like Herman Sony Blount (alias Sun Ra), Louis Thomas Hardin (Moondog alias) and Frank Zappa (alias Frank Zappa); and also a cathartic narrative proposal founded on the ancestral principles of aesthetic the circus one and on an unlearnable exercise of the absurd humor that seems inherited of the Brothers Marx.

The absurd term is used to identify to those who do not act according to a logical thought, separating from the reason. Humor is an emotional state that determines in the individual the possibility of realising certain mental associations. Sigmund Freud said that the essence of the humor consists of which one saves the effects that the respective situation had caused normally, eluding the suffering and allowing that prevails the principle over the pleasure. When the absurd one moves to the field of the art being associated with humor, it allows to introduce elements of null coherence in foreseeable a logical frame being heightened, by means of subtle resistances, his creative nucleus. These factors are unified in the proposal of Reptet and it is not that pies to the face are thrown or leave rinds of banana in the floor awaiting which somebody slips and falls… or that plays their with a clown disguise.

Reptet incorporates playful aspects to represent its music, solves situations through absurd and, really, it pushes to us that the principle of pleasing del prevails that spoke Freud. That yes: when they push, it is necessary to have well-taken care of of not stepping on a banana rind or that the enjoyment of the triumph of the pleasure does not include tortazo in the face. Of plus this saying that they do not use disguises of clown (if my memory serves me right during his concerts one of his members it is disguised of penguin, is not the same).

There are some who ***reflx mng themselves of the other and are some who ***reflx mng themselves with the other.

Absurd humor as much requires a special effort of the emitter as of the receiver and implies an underlying complicity between both. If the emitting fault in its formulation, will fall in the ridiculous situation; and if the receiving fault in its interpretation, the result will be inversely proportional to the looked for one in origin.

We do not have to confuse comicidad with humor. While the comicidad is a more superficial phenomenon, whose main function is to generate the laughter to bring about an explosive and purificante relief, humor, however, it penetrates in intellectual the human plane as as much emotional inducing to a reflective smile of inward-looking dynamics that worsens the level of understanding of the reality.

Reptet does not resort to the comicidad, the ridicule and exaggeration in a premeditaded search through the laughter, of the recognition and the acceptance of the other.

In his place it chooses the sense of humor like means to enjoy themselves, than they make and they think like derivate action from the self-acceptance and the car-recognition to obtain a panoramic vision of his circumstantial surroundings.

If you not want complications or is of that when they tell him joke laughs three times (the first a hearing it, second when they explain it and third it understands when it), perhaps the sagacidad of absurd humor does not please to him. Of being thus, one will more also lose a significant portion of the supply of Reptet… and some things.

And being useful that we are in confidence will not have been you the one that you left forgotten that rind banana over which I encountered in the door of my house, no?

Chicken or Beef? it is the third disc of the band and, surely, the one that better comes near to its scenic unfolding. It was recorded in Seattle by Mel Dettmer, that worked among others with Wayne Horvitz, Skerik and Mr. Bungle and the cover of the album, like its Do predecessor this! of 2006, it has illustrations of the legendary Jim Flora.

The disc abre with Danger Notes, composition of Samantha Boshnak solved through inherent a harmonic frame to music of big band and with recognizable echoes of Latin jazz. Dynamics, in counterpoint of winds, is intercepted by the low one to change in a vigorous rythmical ascent that causes the unfolding of the single ones, concluding in a natural return to the germinal melodic statement.

Reptet Score! , whose responsibility belongs to Chris Credit, it acts like soundtrack of an imaginary film that, by the way, would deserve to film itself. The exotic initial sonoridades transfer to us to the Middle East and of there, without scales, to the Iberian Peninsula. A impiadoso joint with elaborated you break and unimpeachable freshness, joined by means of brief vocal entreactos that celebrate like a collective catharsis. A catharsis is a deep purifying experience brought about by an external stimulus. It comes from the Greek term Κάθαρσις, katarsis or katharsis, that mean purification or purge. A purge however is a laxative used for the lee elimination and, when he is very powerful, also it eliminates eses, member states and some letters more. Olvídese of the subject! Lees are pure.

The catharsis concept, although it has anthropological roots, also has been used in medicine and the psychoanalysis. I do not want to go me by the branches and less after a laxative but I like to investigate in everything what she allows me to have subjects of conversation with my barber that, by the way, him story that is deaf. I found out that the day was deaf that I asked to him that it trimmed the sideburn and left with a haircut to the mohicano style. Not to leave ends loose, I say to him that the mohicanos Indians are a literary invention of James Fenimore Cooper, who created that word combining the name of the real tribes of the mahicanos and moheganos. Bueh… takes all this like a purge, I mean… like a catharsis with lees.

In eltiT we found a cautious approach to the tradition of the jazz but with a structural embryo undressed of leftover elements and a constant emphasis in the pitch harmony, to the way of the minimalismo. Interludio in contrabass has a transforming effect, allowing that the sonorous drawing passes through the melancholy of the blues and the lyricism of Spanish music folkloric; this last one heightened by the magnificent speech of the trompeta of Boshnack. Everything ends with the saxos of connected Mills and Credit in an admirable duel of textures. In Eve of Thrieve, persistent hi hat and the ominous loudness of saxo high, construct the foundations on which the single ones mount in block, with excellent interventions of Bell in trombón, Sea turtle in contrabass and Ewing in action. The percusiva vortex, the obsessive refrain and the contribution of Mills in his human beat box in Chicken or Beef? they join with That s Chicken or Beef in rate of ska. Gwand Wabbit is one (another one) commendable composition of Boshnack that it unifies, in ascending lines, the blues and contemporary classic music.

At Fish Market, out of position intro to pure rock ends at a futurist vision of hard bop to the Sun Ra. The musician Sun Ra affirmed that Saturn came from the planet and that it remained in the Earth with the mission to save the humanity; however, in the case of Reptet, it happens quite the opposite: still they follow in Saturn. Swanni, of Izaak Mills, reunites, in dose of strange balance, intense textures of great harmonic complexity, free improvisation and a full humor of complicities.

In truth, only lacking that in this album we find frightful howls, processed tapes, the infrequent loudness of the bombardino or eufonio, barks, a passage that seems to announce a bullfight of bulls and the disturbing sarcasm of Frank Zappa.

Good exactly all that passes in the Kill subjects the Air and Go Bears. Great end.

Reptet, from the point of view of the creativity and humor, crosses with authority the thin border that separates the genius of madness.

Welcome that thus is.

Madness, sometimes, is not another thing that the presented/displayed reason of different form (Johann W. Goethe)

Sergio Piccirilli

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Jazz Society of Oregon

Review by Kyle O'Brien

Chicken or Beef? - Reptet

If you like to live outside the chords, Seattle is a good place to be. The Emerald City has developed a reputation with its younger musicians who like to be outside the realm of normal swing by incorporating funk beats, atonal melodies and lots of experimentation. The sextet Reptet falls into that category and they continue what groups like Critters Buggin’ have started -- a fusion of sounds that is purely Seattle experimental. It’s not inaccessible avant-garde, as the opening track, “Danger Notes” proves. In fact, it could be an outtake from a ‘70s crime drama score. With instrumentation as diverse as baritone guitar, euphonium, flute, saxophones, brass and “bull moose call,” you know you’re not getting just another jazz group. This is fusion way past the jazz meets rock variety. There is Spanish-influenced bombast (“Reptet Score!”), Eastern-influenced horn jazz (“Eve of Thrieve”), tribal chanting on the title track, ska (“That’s Chicken or Beef”), and plenty of other styles to keep you on your toes. To call this jazz is confining that which can’t be kept. It’s silly at times, always experimental, and not for the squeamish. But it can be fun if you keep a very open mind.

2008, Monktail Records, 59.40.

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Edited by Johnny E
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Hey Folks!!!

This is a really interesting recording by a really interesting band.

Not too many around America these days.

It is playing on my system right now and all thanks to Sam, John, Izaak, Chris, Tim and Nelson. I mentioned Sam first 'cause I understand she wrote many of the charts as well as playing nice brass.

Spending a few bucks will reward and make you look to earlier releases.

If you have the chance to catch the band in person, JUMP!

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Sonic Curiosity

REPTET: Chicken or Beef? (CD on Monktail Records)

This CD from 2008 features 60 minutes of jubilant jazz.

Reptet is: John Ewing (on drums, percussion bull moose call, and vocals), Samantha Boshnack (on trumpet, flugelhorn, slide trumpet, and vocals), Chris Credit (on saxophones and vocals), Tim Carey (on upright and electric bass, baritone guitar, and vocals), Nelson Bell (on trombone, tuba, euphonium, conch shell, and vocals), and Izaak Mills (on saxophone, clarinet, flute, percussion, bull moose call, and vocals) with guests: Lalo Bello (on percussion), Mark Oi (on guitar), Tobi Stone (on clarinet), Clinton Fearon (on frog and vocals), Eyvind Kang (on viola), Lori Goldston (on cello), Paris Hurley (on violin), Maeg O’Donoghue-Williams, Sari Breznau, Kevin Hinshaw, and Scott Adams (all on additional vocals).

Blaring horns and nimble percussion form the outspoken nucleus of this lively music. Many other instruments contribute to the gestalt, though, producing a full palate of sound.

Among the numerous brass and woodwinds, it is the saxophone that holds bouncy sway with strident chords and emphatically piercing notes. Although not entirely devoid of studious melancholy, the horns generally convey a joyous sentiment. Their blaring definition is rich with a sensuous command that becomes quite pronounced at times. The utterances of trumpet, flugelhorn, and clarinet combine tastefully to augment the sax.

The percussion is agile and crisp. While maintaining steadfast propulsion, the rhythms often divert into complex tempos that fit superbly with the rumbling basslines.

Strings provide a subtle undercurrent of classical temperament that is frequently audible peeking through the intentional cracks in the mix. Plucked upright bass establishes instances of cerebral sobriety that ground the otherwise soaring sense of sonic delight.

These compositions display an exultant quality that can be remarkably infectious. Combining elements of swing and cafe jazz, the tuneage is rollicking and rewarding.

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Why wasn't salmon offered? :mellow:

Yeah Johnny.. Why just chicken or beef?? :w

Well the original version went like this:

Chicken, Beef or Dungeness Crab?

But our publicist said that since Dungeness Crab isn't available in all parts of the world, it would be wise to drop it so as to be more "inclusisve" to all our fans.

There was a turkey version too, but that's a whole 'nother story.

Edited by Johnny E
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But our publicist said that since Dungeness Crab isn't available in all parts of the world, it would be wise to drop it so as to be more "inclusisve" to all our fans.

OMG!! ..you're being run by advisors!! :o I heard that one team of pollsters sifted all the data and warned against adding beets! :P

Edited by Son-of-a-Weizen
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Received "Chicken or Beef?" today. Exhilarating, gorgeous, positive, intricate and beautifully performed music. ... And super nice packaging (really!) that breaks me of any fetish I may have had in the past for jewel cases. :excited: (Speedy delivery, too!)

"Do This!" which arrived with "Chicken," is cued up for later as well. ... Thanks for the music, John, and the rec, Chuck.

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The Arts Journal

Doug Ramsey

Reptet, Chicken Or Beef? (Monktail)

The method in their madness is sometimes concealed in over-the-top shenanigans, but there's plenty of artistry, discipline and technique in this second CD by the Seattle sextet. They meld a wild combination of musical ingredients into tight arrangements that in some of their more structured moments recall the combo writing of Rod Levitt, in others jump bands of the early forties and, in many, nothing but Reptet.

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Received "Chicken or Beef?" today. Exhilarating, gorgeous, positive, intricate and beautifully performed music. ... And super nice packaging (really!) that breaks me of any fetish I may have had in the past for jewel cases. :excited: (Speedy delivery, too!)

"Do This!" which arrived with "Chicken," is cued up for later as well. ... Thanks for the music, John, and the rec, Chuck.

I'm so glad you like the music. Thanks for giving it a chance and supporting us. :blush:

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Man, these "reviews." Good for the band to have the publicity, but, wow: if I read another "you might like it but it's not jazz" sentiment I'm going to throw a Jelly Roll collection at the writer...because, as the great Jelly Roll proclaimed, "You can take any song and make it jazz." Why not Ska, why not whatever? After all the oceans of music created in the last 40 or more years that fall into the avant-garde or free or whatever label you need to deal with experimentalist musical mind sets, to have writers wrestling with the "accesible/non-accessible" parameter as the only insight into that history leads one to conclude that they have nothing on Entertainment Tonight. Referencing Zappa isn't much better, because no previous band sounded like this one -- you can't "sum up" Reptet with comparisons. Perhaps the Reptet is helping to push the boundaries of what jazz is and can be -- an idea which does not cross the minds of some of these writers, who have it all set up for the music to fit where they are and don't seem ready to meet the music where it is. Like, wow.

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Man, these "reviews." Good for the band to have the publicity, but, wow: if I read another "you might like it but it's not jazz" sentiment I'm going to throw a Jelly Roll collection at the writer...because, as the great Jelly Roll proclaimed, "You can take any song and make it jazz." Why not Ska, why not whatever? After all the oceans of music created in the last 40 or more years that fall into the avant-garde or free or whatever label you need to deal with experimentalist musical mind sets, to have writers wrestling with the "accesible/non-accessible" parameter as the only insight into that history leads one to conclude that they have nothing on Entertainment Tonight. Referencing Zappa isn't much better, because no previous band sounded like this one -- you can't "sum up" Reptet with comparisons. Perhaps the Reptet is helping to push the boundaries of what jazz is and can be -- an idea which does not cross the minds of some of these writers, who have it all set up for the music to fit where they are and don't seem ready to meet the music where it is. Like, wow.

Listening to "Do This!" now (again). It's hitting me nicely. ... I'd call it pretty damn kick-ass. Some gorgeous arrangements. Best played fairly loud. :excited:

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