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The Beast is like a 10-song best friend peppered with pop-hooks-- a digital and acoustic orchestra arranged into a tight pop structure. Each song has an amazing complexity and listenability. In addition to playing guitars (acoustic, electric, nylon string, and bass), bongos, computer, drum set, egg shakers, hand claps, harmonica, keyboards, leaf crunch, marimba, melodica, piano, recorder, tambourine, vibraphone, vocals, vocoder, and whistles, Michel expands and elaborates on his previous vocal work, layering his voice and harmonies, and further develops his own quirky lyricism. His music is rooted almost entirely in acoustic instruments, but all are recorded separately, edited, processed and rearranged in the computer, putting him among laptop deviants like Dat Politics and Max Tundra as well as the true masters of studio recording like Todd Rundgren, Jeff Lynne, and Brian Wilson. One is reminded of Wilson and Burt Bacharach in Michel's intricate harmonies, dense instrumental layering, and avant-pop congeniality.

30-second MP3 excerpts:

Dust
Planet
The Beast
A To B
RAM
Status Dive
Suds
Simple Animal
ErmaSel
Cricket

If you have a recent version of iTunes software on your computer, clicking on the link immediately below should open the iTunes application and take you to that album's iTunes page-- where you can listen to samples and buy this album, or individual tracks:

Nathan Michel "The Beast"

If you have a subscription account at emusic.com, you can download tracks for purchase here.

This title is also available for download at AmazonMP3.

[please note that, due to international licensing agreements, not all Midheaven titles may be available for download in all territories].

For a complete listing of Midheaven exclusive albums available for download from the iTunes Music service, please visit the Midheaven Mailorder/Revolver USA Downloadables page.

• From lush and and peaceful to curious and fickle, Nathan Michel's songs blend into each other effortlessly, creating an album on par with ambient and new music works of Eno, Mouse On Mars, Steve Reich, and Christian Fennesz
  
• New EP and remixes upcoming in 2003

  30-second RealAudio excerpts:

  Hello (Constant Sorrow)
  Sixteen
  Pound Louder
  Untitled
  Where Do Some Small Birds Live?
  Mars, Like a Rock
  Hosey
  Thirtysix to Fortytwo
  Mufice
  Tones Pathétique

  If you have a recent version of iTunes software on your computer, clicking on the iTunes button immediately below should open the iTunes application and take you to the iTunes Music Service page-- where you can listen to samples and buy this album, or individual tracks:

  

  For a complete listing of Midheaven exclusive albums available for download from the iTunes Music service, please visit the Midheaven Mailorder/Revolver USA Downloadables page.

Lush orchestral strings float above vocoder harmonies and disjunct piano loops. Dirty, prepared guitar solos mix with out-of-step, cheap keyboard accompaniment. Scraps of samples from sources like Patsy Cline, Bach, and Spike Jones are woven into acoustic and electronic textures. While Abc Def edits the source material to bits, Dear Bicycle often allows the sound sources to speak for themselves, unedited.

Many of the songs on Dear Bicycle also feature Michel's quiet singing. His lyrics range from the pastoral imagery of "On the Monorail" and "Rings" to the profoundly ambiguous "I delight in what is right, if that is wrong I tell a little lie." The album's mix of the impersonal and formal with the nostalgic and direct is influenced as much by Robert Wyatt, Brian Eno, The Beatles, and Erik Satie as by Nobukazu Takemura, Mouse on Mars, DAT Politics, and Christian Fennesz.

Nathan Michel currently lives in New Jersey where he is a Ph.D. composition fellow at Princeton. Although he has studied with many fantastic teachers over the years, including the Dutch composer Louis Andriessen, he still tries to make music the same way he did when he was just a kid - fumbling around till he finds sounds that he likes.

Forthcoming projects include a track on a new Skipp Records compilation and a release of live laptop performances on the Italian label Mr. Mutt. More live shows are in the works as well.

• Calmer (by Tigerbeat6 standards) follow-up to Abc Def
  
• Name-that-sample forays in an organic clash with the lush and the cheap
  
• A Ph.D. fellow with a childlike sense of wonder - be still, our fluttering hearts

  30-second RealAudio excerpts:

  Theme Song
  Star Spangled
  Tell
  2000
  Glide
  Rings
  Magellan Fields
  I Delight in What is Right
  On the Monorail
  Telegraph

  If you have a recent version of iTunes software on your computer, clicking on the link immediately below should open the iTunes application and take you to that album's iTunes page-- where you can listen to samples and buy this album, or individual tracks:

  Go to iTunes to browse downloads for Nathan Michel "Dear Bicycle"

  If you have a subscription account at emusic.com, you can download tracks for purchase here.

  This title is also available for download at AmazonMP3.

  For a complete listing of Midheaven exclusive albums available for download from the iTunes Music Service, emusic and Amazon MP3, please visit the Midheaven Mailorder/Revolver USA Downloadables page.

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