Origin Artist

[Flatland] meticulously molds musical soundscapes that can alternately seduce you to sleep, get you stoned, and make you feel all slinky and sexy. Brilliance without words.
Anodyne (Portland, OR)

Made up of drummer Todd Bishop, guitarist Matt Wayne, and bassist Don Corey, this band knows what they want: jazz as improvisation and experimentation. They listen for a map to this land of the free in the work of Charles Gayle, Sonny Sharrock, Albert Ayler and Charlie Patton. Most importantly, they stab at the seminal '70s free harmonic jazz of Keith Jarrett's Quartet and the Dewey Redman/Don Cherry/Charlie Haden/Ed Blackwell collective Old and New Dreams, a spacious sound of group interplay where silence is a part of the band.

In '94, Bishop and Corey joined with singer-songwriter Jeff Groves to form a macho rock band, Raging Woodies. "Yeah, well...we were trying to get an aggressive rock sound with some of the freedom of a Keith Moon kinda thing," says Bishop, sounding more than a bit noncommittal. All the while, he and Corey were delving deeper into free waters with their listening; the bassist even began experimenting with wah-wah and Interstellar Overdrive distortion during Woodies' shows. When the band broke up in '97, the two knew where they wanted to go.

Corey met fellow Berklee graduate Matt Wayne through teaching, and soon after, they had their third man. "The chemistry was there playing-wise," says Bishop. "I knew it was the right decision when Matt started doing these crazy loops and delays that we'd imagined."

RECORDINGS FEATURING Flatland

Flatland

Origin of Species

Origin 82374

Flatland

The Satellite

Origin 82362