BEFORE BRAILLE "cattle punching on a jack rabbit"

[EARS] [EYES] [buy]

"...There is one band with one style, clearly their own, singing about the things that matter to them; it's one of the best records I've heard in months..." - Jason C. Jones, IN YOUR EAR complete review

"This is one of the best releases I have ever heard, independent or not." Independent Clauses

THE LETTER PRESS "input/output"

Historically, the bass guitar has not been considered an instrument of beauty in the annals of rock, but on "Input/Output" The Letterpress have managed to create melodic, coex music using two bass guitars, percussion and vocals. Bassist/ singer Jeremy Drysdale, augmented by Before Braille guitarist Rajiv Patel on lead bass and Dustin Carson on percussion, crafts memorable pop songs that are surprisingly diverse given their limited soundscapes. One might think that a CD recorded only with instruments normally used for rhythmic underpinnings would grow repetitious, but amazingly the disc remains interesting throughout. by Chris Holly, Get Out

RAJIV PATEL "obey the cattle" PURCHASE

"Once you finally break through the shell...all the subtleties break through to you, and this becomes a stellar release, full of intricate touches." -Independent Clauses

Rajiv Patel is Before Braille's guitarist, and Obey The Cattle is his debut solo album, released on Sunset Alliance a short while before Before Braille's curiously titled Cattle Punching on a Jack Rabbit. A love of cows certainly seems to characterize these Phoenix-based musicians, but Patel's real loyalty appears to lie with the guitar. He plays skillfully and complexly, with much emphasis on complicated rhythms and Middle Eastern melodies unfamiliar to most North American ears.
Due to its uniqueness, this disc may end up confined to a relative minority of music fans, although those willing to give it a chance should be impressed - regardless of their current musical hang-ups. Getting used to the Middle Eastern scales and keys takes some mental adjustment; however, if you immerse yourself in Obey the Cattle, you could find an album better than most others you own, both technically and melodically.
Since this album is mostly instrumental, its variation from track to track (all of which are assumed to be untitled due to the lack of a track listing with this CD) is relatively subtle. Patel's guitar playing is very powerful; if you let yourself relax and just absorb the music, you'll likely find yourself quite moved by the sounds you hear. All in all, this isn't a record for those short of patience. If you're the type who's willing to really give a good record a chance, Obey the Cattle won't disappoint. grade: 87% --Indieville

No one in recent memory has sublimated the creative ego quite as effectively as Before Braille guitarist Rajiv Patel. Obey the Cattle!, Patel's latest solo album, offers 10 primarily instrumental tracks, none of them titled or credited in any way, with the whole album breezing through in just under 25 minutes. The unassuming subtlety of Obey the Cattle!'s physical presentation is somewhat mirrored in Patel's subdued musically presentation, although he is a guitarist of astonishing dexterity and invention. Throughout the course of Obey the Cattle!, Patel manages to reference touchpoints as distinct as his Indian/Hindu ethnicity, his use of found sound and sonic collage techniques and a fluid fingerstyle rival the achievements of John Fahey, Leo Kottke and MIchael Hedges. By eliminating words both graphically and sonically from his work, Patel is forcing his listeners to concentrate exclusively on the music without the preconceptions of titling or the infliction of lyrical meaning. Patel's presentation is a bold creative statement for an album of such incredibly subtle artistry. -Brian Baker, Rockpile.

If Half Visconte were not one of these groups too prematurely disappeared, advancing consciously towards his programmed dissolution, one would have launched out in a sea of superlatives, certain to hold a future major group here. But per hour when this disc left, the group did not exist already any more.

In May 2000, the group announced on a newsletter the following program, imposed by the imminent removals towards various American states from some of its members: turn in June, recording of the album in July, turn in August, Split in September, exit of the album in October.

The mission was accomplished, but as for any disc given up with its fate, the diffusion becomes random and they are only four years later than it lands in my reader CD. In fact since strange reports/ratios can be established between a first album without continuation, four years old, recorded by the group as a door of exit. It is not thus a door of entry on nothing other but these ten compositions which will not have a continuation.

Inevitably this optics had to influence the recording and the production of the disc. ' Was it fear ', the title implies it, environments will be rather dark, cold and worrying. Half Visconte develops a songwriting sinks and calms, oscillating between post-hardcore completely assagi and post-rock'n'roll of sky of rain, fond of delicacies of electric sounds, fugacious structures and some planing electronic sounds. Difficult also to locate the song of Scott Tennent, of anything hardcore, not either émo sparing bus of heat, rather frozen and painful, sincere and alleviated, in the line perhaps of that of the singer of Down Engine if it decreased his vocal rate/rhythm.

What is painful is that to the listening of this single album, one thinks that there was a place very ready for Half Visconte, that this manner of translating a songwriting post-hardcore/post-emo from the point of view post-rock'n'roll. ' Was It Fear' is not an easy disc, it is rather a work which it is necessary to conquer, urgent and without concessions, not directly brilliant, especially rough and demanding.

It is the kind of disc where one foresees a work in building site which generally reveals all its breath and its results in the following discs, which will not arrive here.

A beautiful album of promises and not held prospects. Who remakes us the same one salts joke as City Of. -Didier, Derives.net