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Consider the Source / About This Artist

Artist Details and Stats:

Hometown: New York, NY

Website: www.facebook.com

Sounds Like: Medeski Martin & Wood, "The bad plus", Primus, Tool, Ozric Tentacles

Genre: Rock

#-
Rock charts for New York, NY
  • 31,899
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Biography:

NYC trio Consider the Source defy easy description. If intergalactic beings of pure energy, after initiation into an order of whirling dervishes, built some kind of pan-dimensional booty-shaking engine, powered by psychedelics and abstract math, it'd probably just sound like a CTS tribute band. Drawing from progressive rock, fusion and jazz, with alien sounds soaked in Indian and Middle Eastern styles, CTS blends disparate parts into a striking, utterly original whole. Dubbed “Sci-Fi Middle Eastern Fusion”, the band's music strikes a rare balance between cerebral and emotional, intellectual and primal. A relentless touring schedule has won the band a fervent following from California to Israel, with fans ranging from jam-band hippies and jazz cats to corpse-painted headbangers and prog geeks.
Formed in 2004, Consider the Source features Gabriel Marin on fretless double-neck guitar, bassist John Ferrara, and drummer/percussionist Jeff Mann. Called “the guiding light for his generation of six-stringers”, Marin channels the mystical fury of McLaughlin and Coltrane into wailing melodies, kaleidoscopic soundscapes and boneshaking riffs. With a background in classical musics both Eurpoean and Indian, and an instinct for avant-jazz and destructive metal, Marin's hypnotic fusion of styles is ever unpredictable. Ferrara's propulsive, percussive attack, equally suited to simple grooves and impossible chords, can ground the music or launch it into space. His madcap gumbo of slap bass, Indian rhythms, earthy minimalism and complex tapping constantly pushes into strange new worlds, whilst still dropping thick booty-clap beats. Underneath them lies Mann's rolling thunder; dense rhythmic architecture built from pure swagger and bounce. Half double-bass prog-metal, half crackle-pop Buddy Rich swing, with African and Balkan swirls, Mann's muscular, freewheeling polyrhythms are the engine fuel for Consider's multiversal mischief. Even when not improvising, Consider's music is always a conversation, a roiling stew of dynamic interplay. Each member of Consider the Source alternately leads and follows, spars and assists; in any single song, alliances are made and broken, bargains struck and divorces finalized.
Touring from coast to coast, as well as Europe and the Middle East, has not only earned the band thousands of fans, but has allowed them to perform with wide variety of well-known artists, including Victor Wooten, Wayne Krantz, King Crimson Projekt, Kris Myers (Umphrey's McGee), Wyclef Jean, Andy Statman, Grace Potter & The Nocturnals, Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, Dumpstaphunk, Keller Williams, George Porter, Jr., Jeff Sipe, Panzerballet (Germany), Eatliz (Israel), Freak Kitchen (Sweden), Morglbl (France), and many others. They have performed at numerous festivals and events, including Catskill Chill, The Big Up, Burning Man, Sun Seekers Ball (Canada), Mid-Summer Meltdown, Rootwire, the NYC Fretless Guitar Festival, and the NYC Gypsy Festival. The band's newest album, "F**k It! We'll Do It Live" is available from considerthesource-nyc.bandcamp.com.

Press:

“Pulling off music that is this complex is akin to walking a tightrope in high winds. Making all of it groove, move and breathe organically is an even more-daunting challenge, but all through Friday’s show, CTS did just that. Rarely is music this progressive so . . . well, sexy and exotic are the words that come to mind. Music for the brain and the body, then. ”
Buffalo News

"a particularly enticing and heady brand of jam-rock that's heavy on complex time signatures, Middle-Eastern motifs and blurry, white-hot musical interplay."
Free Times Columbia

"a shimmering prog-rock opus"
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"having seen them live, I completely understand why people are so fanatical about them. They were amazing."
Guilt Free Pleasures

"Consider the Source fuse a variety of styles together to create their own sonic masterpieces. Though there are only three members in the band, they manage to weave a thick tapestry of sound.
The Raquette

"If you're curious as to what the kids are listening to in the Big Apple, Consider The Source may provide the answers."
Earvolution

"intense jams, showcasing their diversity and pushing their instruments to the proverbial limit"
Relix.com

"impressive improvisational skills and signature Middle Eastern motifs."
jambase

“Village Voice hails us as "Mesmerizing World Metal"...”
Melissa Giannini - Village Voice

“2007 Top Recordings”
Howard Mandel - Jazzhouse Wiki

“CTS Mention in Howard Mendel's Book”
Howard Mendel - Miles Ornette Cecil Jazz Beyond Jazz