Chemystry Set

Chemystry Set's Astro Ball
CD & Book Release Party for
Dancing on the Brink of the World
a song cycle through the signs of the zodiac
Friday, November 13, 9pm
Hotel Utah
500 4th St @ Bryant, San Francisco
w/ special guests Luke Thomas Trio & Love, Isabel
Advance tickets at Ogden Park
NEW RELEASE! DANCING ON THE BRINK OF THE WORLD
Book & CD now available
Dancing on the Brink of the World presents Chemystry Set in the presence of brilliant minds, graspable concepts, and a plethora of creativity.
- muzikreviews.com
Welcome to the world of Chemystry Set.Founded on an auspicious evening in November of 1996, the idea was to create a platform that would allow musicians of all different backgrounds and characters to add their own individual blend of skills and energy to the overall mix. Rather than finding any particular style to play, it seemed to make a lot more sense to let everyone's quirky personality unfold and see where it would take us. This way, the Chemystry Set could just stay the Chemystry Set while everyone was constantly evolving and experimenting with all the diverse elements inherent in it.
Ten years and five albums later, Chemystry Set keeps defying their own musical boundaries, integrating — yet never emulating — genres ranging from world rhythm, jazz, and groove, to bluegrass, fusion, progressive rock, and punk. And in between those dancing musical note, you will always find a few morsels of wisdom, words of encouragement, entire philosophies, or just a simple smile. Our good friend Scott Coldren says it better than we ever could:
"This is positive, uplifting music. It’s good for your soul. And yet, when you listen to the words, you begin to realize that what you’re hearing are warnings embedded in these beautiful melodies. Warnings that we as a human race need to rethink what we’re doing, reexamine who we are, and reestablish a better way of living because this world and this life are the only ones we’re going to get. Chemystry Set is here to remind us that it’s not too late, that there are still ways to improve things, and that you really can draw life-changing inspiration from music that genuinely matters. Yes, it really is as simple as that."
Ultimately, it is the love for music and exploring the unknown together with fellow kindred spirits that brought us together and lends our eclectic orchestra its backbone and character. We love doing crazy stuff and think that life itself is a piece of art. We're into creating family and community, and the joy of playing and hanging out always outweighs all the potential rat races beckoning with seductive capitalist smiles.
Hopefully we'll see you at a show soon!
Discography
2009 - Dancing on the Brink of the World
2006 - Cobblestone Below My Feet
2004 - Live at the Sweatlodge
2003 - The Last Real Experience
2001 - The Space Between
1998 - Life in the Underground
All Chemystry Set CDs available through Ogden Park
What the People say:
"Zoinks!
Here I am in Bangalore, hanging the 3-loads of laundry after a 10 day vacation in the jungles of the Western Ghats.
Asked the girls what tunes they'd like to crank while we fold and hang and sort clean clothes... Jack Johnson? nawww.... KidTunes? no way! ...how about Pat Metheny? uughh, Dad, that's YOUR music! Chemystry Set? YES YES YES!!!! We LOOOOOVE chemystry set!!!!
So we are frolicking about doing laundry, looking outside at swaying palm trees and stinky rickshaws, with the triple Chem-album shuffle on at HIGH volumne!
THANK YOU ALL FOR YEARS of LUSCIOUS TUNES!!!!!! I treasure your gift of music to the world!!!
now we need to head out for masala dosas, and some other "essentials." "
love, Pablo
check out the Amstutz India blog
"Cobblestone Below My Feet has a great communal feel to it. It is boldly genre-crossing and yields new discoveries with repeat listens."
- Chip Withrow, The Muse's Muse. Full Review
"Cobblestone Below My Feet is a kick-butt extravaganza of expectations-defying, post-modern wonder. The louder it gets, the better it gets."
- ..Steve Forrest, Seven Paws Press..
Chemystry Set LIVE at the Sweatlodge
by Randy Lyman
I'll set the scene for you, since being human means living in 3D space and linear time: Nighttime upon a great urban grid of streets, the perpendicular crossing of two of them, a boxy gray building, a small cubic room inside. Angles atop angles, boxes inside boxes, a Chinese puzzle. Outside it¹s refreshingly cool, and the April moon is bright as the streetlights. Inside it's sultry as a sauna, with the band taking up half the room to play and three dozen friends crammed into the other half to hear, no, to experience, be a part of, this live recording, this sweat lodge serenade.
And what a serenade — music as opposed to its linear surroundings as the beating heart is to the cages of science. The first set tore a new riverbed through the hard rock landscape and the second set let the river roar. Every time I hear Chemystry Set I feel like I'm hearing it for the first time: musicianship tight as an atom, music wild and roaming as the imagination of the unknown. It's like everything and nothing I've ever heard, a screaming reminder that rock is rebellion and must be reinvented each time it's played, or else it's just pop. I'm thinking of "The Last Real Experience" as I write that, but I could mean any of the songs on this CD. "Tiger on a Roll," for instance, where prog rock meets the new age in an eco-power-ballad that sounds like all ballads and none of them at the same time. But you can hear all this for yourself.
What I wanted to say was this: At one point during the serenade I looked over at the recording system in the corner, a tower of blinking amps and mixers and a futuristic iMac with sound moving across its display in orange bars as though pumped in right from the stage, sound re-conceived as light and movement, and in a flash I knew what I was experiencing: that the oxymoron live recording expresses something both contradictory and essential about us and about that night, the fantastic, surprising, human realization that every day is not the same old sunrise/sunset but is absolutely unique, and that our whole need and struggle is to capture this, because some moments are worth living forever, if only one could. That's what the spirit is for. And that's what this "live recording" makes happen. Impossible as such an endeavor may seem, insubstantial as the spirit may be, made as it is of nothing. Yet somehow, it's everything.
-Randy Lyman
Randy is a poet, journalist, author, activist, Mac addict, history buff, dreamer, gardener, and book lover, with other identities as the need arises. He wishes he could keep God lost and shuffled amidst his papers, because he's never so certain of something's existence as when he's searching for it on his desk.