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Dylan Ryan's Sand to Tour in Support of Their Debut Album, Sky Bleached, a Stunning, Guitar-Drenched Slab of Visionary, 21st Century Jazz Informed by Pop Culture and 3rd Millennium Fusion
DYLAN RYAN / SAND "I had the idea to write songs for a jazz band that had elements of Black Sabbath, the Cure, Jaco-era Joni Mitchell, and free jazz. I intentionally made the free playing and the composed sections less compartmentalized. The idea is to have a really great sounding rhythm section that can stretch out and make music spontaneously, and naturally together. Sand is a jazz band, but it reflects the different things I grew up on and listen to; It reflects the fact that I am playing jazz, but that I wasn't born in 1945." Featuring his volatile and dramatic trio Sand, Sky Bleached is Dylan Ryan’s debut album under his own name, but the insistently exploratory Los Angeles-based drummer and composer isn’t making a first impression. Ryan is bandstand veteran who’s spent the past decade collaborating with an array of galvanizing musicians across a wide array of creative rock, jazz and alternative scenes in Chicago and Los Angeles. Ryan is probably best known as the catalyst behind the pugnacious prog-jazz sextet Herculaneum. Sand also features Timothy Young, one of the busiest and most versatile guitarist's in Los Angeles. Recently Young has performed with the likes of David Sylvian, Rebecca Pidgeon, John Zorn, Beck, and Fiona Apple. TOURING LINE-UP TOUR DATES Mon. July 29: BROOKLYN, NY Tues. July 30: NEW YORK, NY Wed. July 31: PHILADELPHIA, PA Thurs. August 1: ASBURY PARK, NJ Fri. August 2: WASHINGTON, DC Sun. August 4: EAGLE ROCK, CA Mon. August 5: VENICE, CA ____________________
"Dylan Ryan is a drummer adept at combining his jazz skills with adventurous rock, resulting in music that maintains the cerebral and viceral qualities of both. Sand finds him in a trio... the set is split almost evenly between the drummer's compositions-engaging guitar melodies delivered with the heft of prog rock-and group improvs that succeed whether they're gentle or vicious..."
- JazzTimes "In his new band, Sand, Ryan couldn't have found a better guitarist than Tim Young, who could be mistaken for Bill Frisell, if Frisell enjoyed punching random people in the face. With an ass-kicking palate of sonic texture, Ryan, Young and bassist Devin Hoff offer something in between John Zorn's raucous free-jazz and the romantic stylings of Black Sabbath." - L.A. Weekly Featuring his volatile, Los Angeles-based trio Sand, Sky Bleached is Dylan Ryan’s debut album under his own name, but the insistently exploratory drummer isn’t a new face on the professional music soundstage. A bandstand veteran who’s spent the past decade collaborating with an array of galvanizing musicians across a wide array of creative scenes, he’s probably best known as the catalyst behind the pugnacious prog-jazz sextet Herculaneum. That’s likely to change with Cuneiform’s release of Sky Bleached, a stunning, guitar-drenched slab of visionary, 21st century jazz informed by pop culture and 3rd millennium fusion. A key force in the avant-rock project Icy Demons, and half of the psychedelic electronica power duo Michael Columbia, the Chicago-raised Ryan has also toured with Omaha indie rock legends Cursive and regularly works with Los Angeles electro-world-pop outfit Rainbow Arabia. Boasting a sonic vision that stretches to the far horizon, Sky Bleached draws on many of Ryan’s varied experiences, but Sand instantly establishes itself as wild and wooly creature in its own right. Featuring Los Angeles guitarist Tim Young, a versatile player sought out by artists such as Fiona Apple, John Zorn and Beck, and bassist Devin Hoff, a recent LA arrival who’s toured and recorded extensively with the Nels Cline Singers, Xiu Xiu, and Good For Cows, the LA-based trio restlessly ranges between moods, textures and styles. For Ryan, the project provided an ideal opportunity for exploring contrasting, even antithetical impulses, juxtaposing introspective odes with aggressive anthems, artfully composed passages and impromptu flights. “I had the idea to write songs for a band that had elements of Black Sabbath, the Cure, Jaco-era Joni Mitchell, and free jazz,” Ryan says. “I was really inspired by an interview I read with Dylan Carlson on the topic of collective improvisation on a recent Earth record. So the free playing and the composed sections are less compartmentalized. The idea is to have a really great sounding rhythm section that can stretch out without being explicitly tied to parts and make music spontaneously and naturally together.”
Far more than a collection of exciting tunes, the album is programmed like a Quentin Tarantino film, marked by wide open spaces, sudden accelerations, and lovingly subverted genre conventions. Opening with the cinematic “White Nights,” Ryan offers an open-road invitation by way of an infectious 5/4 bass and drums groove that sets up Young’s gracefully swooping panoramic solo. The action heats up with “Barocco,” an extended crescendo that builds from Young’s lilting fingerstyle guitar work to a furious, churning climax. After the wave crashes, the trio recovers from the release of pent up tension as Hoff and Young’s vamp on a subtly funky and angular dénouement for Ryan’s beautifully understated solo. “Psychic Journey” kicks off with a clattering cowbell pattern that sets up a lovely pop melody rendered by Hoff and Young in unison, and then shifts back to a denser sonic web built on a laid back 6/8 shuffle. Here, as with much of Sand’s material, Ryan employs some of the strategies he developed on recent Herculaneum recordings, creating solo sections that are less about harmonic development than establishing a mood through finely calibrated bass and drums interplay. And then sometimes the band just wails. On Paul Motian’s “White Magic,” Ryan offers an uproarious tribute to the late, beloved bandleader and drummer, effortlessly adopting a squally piece from the classic 1982 album Psalm (ECM) with a surf-rock vibe accentuated by the red hot Frusciantesque backwards effects employed by Young in his solo. Ryan wrote the tunes with Young and Hoff in mind, knowing that they would thrive in the open spaces he provided. “I brought in loose sketches that I wrote on guitar,” he explains. “My limitations on the guitar allowed (or rather forced) me to think in broader gestures than anything I write and arrange on piano for the five voices in Herculaneum, and I totally trusted that Tim and Devin would get inside them.” Part of what makes Sky Bleached such a rewarding debut is that Sand never settles into a singular course or strategy. The trio also embraces collective improvisation, pieces that can take a volatile turn, like the brief, crunching “Mayan Sun,” or that can buzz with ominous portent, like “Soft Rain On a Dead Sea,” which features some haunting Hoff bow work. The album closes with two extemporaneous tunes that find Sand wandering through a strange and spacious soundscape. With a sound as evocative as its title, “Dreamspell” floats with an unsettling logic, evolving from a coiled drone to a headlong pursuit. The chase seems to continue on the concluding title track, as Young brings his cagey stuttering lines to the predatory but atmospheric bass/drums conversation. Beyond the sheer pleasure provided by listening to three musicians challenge, probe, and support each other, the most striking aspect of the Sky Bleached improvisations is the trio’s evident willingness to take their flights to the edge of disarray, and navigate to resolution within that uncharted terrain. In some ways the group compositions are reminiscent of Jimmy Giuffre’s late-1950s “abstracts” where, although the group is creating a spontaneous piece of music, the rhythmic and harmonic consonance invites listeners on the journey. Many a fan will instantly cotton to sounds like the “Are You Experienced?” backward cymbal or a fuzzed out Black Sabbathian guitar line, though the sounds are thoroughly repurposed by the trio. Ryan was writing the music at the same time he was collaborating with the LA electronica duo Rainbow Arabia and touring with Cursive. “Aesthetically these three bands are in totally different buildings, but for whatever reason it really worked for me to be consistently writing, just shifting back and forth between palettes,” he says. “Tim and Devin and I set out to make what we thought a really engaging record could sound like, with composition, groove, emotion, melody, and improvisation holding almost equal weight.” With their love of jazz, metal, indie pop and numerous other styles, Ryan, Hoff and Young draw on a vast shared sonic vocabulary in Sand. In creating a fertile environment for the trio, Ryan fully utilizes Hoff’s gift for melodic invention, and Young’s imperturbable rhythmic drive. Whether exploring a melancholy soundscape or an ecstatic rave up, Sky Bleached constantly subverts expectations with music that defies categories, and embraces all possibilities. PROMOTIONAL TRACK // ARTIST WEBSITE // http://sand.dylanryanmusic.com/ ____________________
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"White Nights"