Latest Audio Sound Premieres in Old Town

by Robert Chacon

7-Jun-01

With the premiere of his group's new album, the self-titled Studio Voodoo, Gary Mraz is claiming he will change the way you listen to music - forever.Mraz, a Citrus College music professor that teaches recording technology, introduced his new album to a handful of people at Cafe Mundial restaurant inOld Town Monrovia Sunday night.Studio Voodoo is a DVD album that blends driving, electronic dance and techno beats with African tribal chants and drums, flamenco guitar, operatic singing, spoken word, urban sounds, and an eclectic array of layered sounds he and band member Ted Price have collected from their travels around the globe. The rhythmic, alchemical mixture is the first entire album ever recorded and released in an extended surround format, a technology developed by surround sound pioneers DTS Entertainment.As if the bewitching beats werenít enough to send a person into a dance induced trance, the fluid, and figurative paintings of John R. Grieder, along with the cubist works of Neal Doty, can be projected onto a screen while the music is playing.These images, said Mraz, represent how he visualized his music. ""I donít really like music videos, and these static images help your mind interpret the music without that influence.""Mraz is convinced that surround sound, and the technology used to record it will replace what people use to listen to music today. ""Stereo is dead,"" he said. ""People will know that there are more than just two speakers.""To be precise, Studio Voodooís format utilizes seven speakers, embedding the listener in a literal, swirling whirlwind of music and sound. ""This sucks you in and spits you out,"" said Mraz. ""I love it,"" said Bridget Sincabage, as she shook her dreadlocks to the beat.. ""This is by far the most creative use of speakers Iíve ever heard."" Travis Ensling, owner of Cafe Mundial, and himself a musician, was excited about letting Mraz use his restaurant to premiere Studio Voodoo. ""This is the first album of its type in history, and this is the first public performance of it.""The idea for using the DTS technology first came to Mraz and Price in 1997, when they attended a demonstration of the technology. ""When I realized I could do this with my music, it was like a revelation,"" said Mraz, who, along with Price, had written pop music songs.Both realized that a future in pop music wasnít for them. ""We just couldnít do it, it wasnít for us,"" said Mraz.During their travels around the world, working different musical stints, they described, what Mraz called, the ""voodoo vibe."" ""It was about what people were doing musically everyday, and our music tries to capture that,"" said Mraz.