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The Pad in CD-Quality
WAV format...
Click the arrow for audio samples:
($1.50/Song)
1.
Take It Away
2.
The Pad
3.
Hanging Upside Down On A Train (Featuring HazelEye)
4.
Twinkle
5.
Prelude
6.
Beautiful Delusion
7.
Babycakes
8.
All I Want Is You
9.
Welcome To My World
Files are uncompressed and very large and are not recommended for those without a broadband internet connection.
Produced, written, arranged and performed on guitar, piano, synthesizer,
percussion, and voice by The Pad. Mastered by Cookie Marenco/OTR Studios
"Hanging Upside Down on a Train" written by HazelEye and The Pad.
Karsten Fritz: bass clarinet on Welcome To My World
Andreas Lang: cello on Welcome To My World and Babycakes
HazelEye: voice and guitar on Hanging Upside Down on a Train
Amy Burkhoff: piano on Hanging Upside Down on a Train
Nicholas Varchaver: double bass on Twinkle
Creative assistance, artwork and photography: HazelEye
Packaging and cover design: Andreas Lang
HazelEye is Becca Lee Johnson
The Pad is Gene Bryan Johnson
With some justification The Pad fancies himself a mad scientist, creating
art without the annoying pressure of marketplace considerations. This
approach has resulted in nine unique concoctions that, both individually and
collectively, seem to transcend time in a way that is simultaneously
nostalgia-laden, modern and futuristic. It is a work that is sometimes
soothing, sometimes jarring and sometimes a little strange (ok very
strange), but it will also make you smile at the most unlikely moments and
maybe even stir up those long forgotten feelings you'd buried after that
first heartbreak.
One standout track is "Hanging Upside Down on a Train," a collaboration with
singer/songwriter HazelEye, who happens to be his college-age daughter.
Unrepentant explorers such as The Pad often work with more conventional
pop-oriented artists to help us understand their artistic point of view.
This nine-minute epic accomplishes that goal and then some. "Hanging Upside
Down on a Train" is a masterful production‹an arrangement of acoustic
guitars, piano, ethereal vocal harmonies, spoken words and sound effects
that depict a socially conscious girl's disillusionment with love, her
coming to terms with a personal betrayal and an unfailing belief in her own
ability to change the world despite her loss of innocence. HazelEye grounds
The Pad in a way that might help him reach a more mainstream audience and,
as with all successful partnerships, it is hard to tell where the father
ends and the daughter begins.
"Welcome To My World," the final and longest track at 13:46, begins with The
Pad's Spanish-influenced guitar in unison with his eerie voice as it hums a
melody that evokes the best of Alfred Hitchcock's emotionally unsettling
mood portraits. More composition than song, this piece is a mysterious
journey through field recordings of birds, the cries of an orphaned baby
seal, various otherworldly sounds and textures, and atonally-aggressive bass
clarinet improvisations (by Germany's Karsten Fritz) that resolve into an
ethereal atmosphere of electronically processed textures that call to mind a
sunlit fresh water pond in the midst of the darkest jungle habitat. Other
favorites are "Twinkle," a refreshingly honest expression of feeling that
uses unusual time-signatures to portray the shifting nature of newly
discovered love; the title track, another deep and timbre-intense view into
The Pad's strange (there's that word again) mind; and "Babycakes", a quirky
world-pop ditty built around a shaker, acoustic guitars, cello and horns.
The Pad is an ironic work. Possibly because of his eclectic
approach - singer/songwriter, ambient, experimental, and improvisational - The
Pad is easy to listen to, yet not Easy Listening; challenging, yet
comforting; wise, yet optimistic. This is not art for everyone but there is
something for everyone here.
