They are the mad scientists of music. That’s the conclusion of one Buffalo music veteran.
What other rock band would dare interpret something by Hungarian composer Bela Bartok?, another wonders.
Peanut Brittle Satellite was born in a Buffalo basement in 2007. Four years later, the band has affirmed its status as our region’s most daring, experimental and virtuosic rock band with the release of “Planet Girth.”
The Peanut Brittle Satellite lads — guitarist Zack Mikida, bassist Ian Machniak, keyboardist Zach Kushner, drummers Shawn Brandel and Ryan Campbell and violinist Evan Courtin — are not just at the forefront of Buffalo’s independent music scene. They are representing in microcosmic form a new nationwide movement in experimental, instrumental rock — one that includes such artists as Explosions in the Sky, Russian Circles and Consider the Source.
At the core of the band’s music is a musicological bent. These young men are schooled and skilled musicians willing and able to grab influences from forebears in such disparate idioms as jazz, progressive rock, funk, dub, reggae, ambient and trance musics, Latin sounds and jam-band stylings. Added to this melding of sounds is a songwriting acumen at once playful and dazzlingly ambitious.
“These guys are masterful players, man, but they are always dedicated to the song, to the groove,” says veteran Buffalo musician and music educator Eric Crittenden. “There’s a satirical, almost self-deprecating aspect to the composition — as if, even though the playing is very serious, the guys are having fun with it. It recalls Frank Zappa, in that sense.
“The music is totally composed, totally counted and not just jammed out. But at the same time, the music is always felt, you know?”
Crittenden’s point is well-taken, particularly if you’ve seen the band live. The Peanut Brittle Satellite sound is complex, but there is humor and levity in its approach. Clearly, the guys take the music seriously, but themselves? Much less so.
Within the densely woven fabric of the band’s sound, a grandiose cadence might give way to a dizzying shift in rhythm, whirs and bleeps and vertiginous crescendoes, or an angular guitar solo that is at once jaw-droppingly virtuosic and a bit tongue-in-cheek.
So how do they pull it off? How can such intricate music retain such a deep sense of groove? Is achieving this an end product of the band’s musical philosophy, or did the sound just develop organically?
“It’s absolutely organic,” says guitarist Mikida. “The ideas may come from any direction, but the approach we employ is that someone in the band could transform it into something completely different.
“We all have our own musical aesthetics, and that is obvious in our compositions. We do use various methods of writing, to try and discipline the sound. There’s a lot going on when you get six multi-instrumentalists together, so if you don’t have a pre-existing outline of a song — that could cause some serious clutter. We find ourselves using [music composing and notation software] Finale. … With Finale you can write out the voices on staves and make a thorough piece of music; then it’s just a matter of printing the music and playing it.
“Although any one of the members of Peanut Brittle Satellite may show up with sheet music to any rehearsal, we always leave room for that music to breathe by taking any idea that could better the piece.”
Though all of the band members are in their early- to mid-20s, the group has proven itself appealing to listeners in a much older demographic, in addition to its largely college-age fan base. Music-lovers who grew up with such revered ’70s-era prog-rock bands as Yes, King Crimson, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Gentle Giant and the aforementioned Zappa — all of whom seem to have been influences on the Peanut Brittle sound — have begun to rally around the group.
“I love them for many reasons, but first and foremost, I love them because they incorporate lots of shifting time signatures, exotic scales and modes and the amazing complexity of the prog-rock I grew up loving,” says local musician and promoter Kevin Kukoda.
You might not glean as much from a casual glance at the Billboard Top 10 charts, where safe-as-milk pop and hip-hop still reign, but this is an interesting time in the ongoing development of popular music. We’re witnessing inspired cross-pollination between some of the hippest prog-rock and fusion music of the past with the still-growing “jam-band” stylings. Whether or not the band planned it this way, Peanut Brittle Satellite is part of this movement, here in Buffalo and in the broader sense.
For Mikida, having a musical philosophy that is mirrored in a personal philosophy has become a guiding principle — one that has more significance to him than any conventional notions of “making it big.” He credits some of these metaphysical/musical tenets to time he spent studying with recently deceased music educator Jim Kurzdorfer at Villa Maria College, where the renowned jazz bassist ran a jazz summer camp for high school musicians and taught music theory.
“If you knew Jim Kurzdorfer, you were honored,” says Mikida.
“I loved that man. He was a true mentor to me. I remember each conversation we had in his little office, piled to the ceiling with music books. We’d talk about his ideas of philosophy, in music and in the universe, and I would be left breathless. It says something about a man when his absence is noticed more than most people’s presence.”
Musically, Peanut Brittle Satellite is right where it should be. On the stage in clubs like Nietzsche’s, DBGB and even the Pearl Street Grill, the band presents itself as a well-oiled machine, a group of musicians whose level of dynamic interplay is almost without peer in our region.
Of course, none of this offers the band any guarantees. Few bands as decidedly experimental and challenging as this one make the jump to mainstream success.
However, with the collapse of the “old” music industry has come the groundswell of an independent music network. Many of the bands who have employed this network in order to build a large and loyal group of followers — Umphrey’s McGee, for example — have gone from regional success to the stages of major festivals. Clearly, this is one blueprint for Peanut Brittle Satellite to consider following.
“They should get out of Buffalo,” laughs Crittenden. “Real fast.”
Similar Posts:
- Seinfeld returning to Shea’s
- Countdown to the Fourth
- Paisley caps country-fried night at Darien Lake
- Powerful words
- Pixar rides ‘Cars 2’ to top of weekend box-office sales
