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Blue Midnight Highway
Spaced out: Eric Burger’s collaborative project puts you in another dimension.
The music found on Blue Midnight Highway’s Secret Ninja Tracks and Lo-Fi Hi-Fi is not easy to sum up. The collaboration project headed by Toledoan Eric Burger is a kaleidescope of trip-hop beats, dark dub, industrial metal and ethereal dream pop. With Burger at the production helm, he incorporates the lyrical talents of local talent Anthony Lindsey, Natural, Ryan Rolsten (of Echo of Silence and The Separation Tree) and Burger himself. The range of sound is vast— from the industrial metal “Shine” (a tribute to the late local graffiti artist Heist) to the Crystal Method influenced “Dummy” to the dubbed out spaciness of my personal favorite “Dark Grey” — the pallette is broad. The cohesive element in all this variety is the quality of production and composition. Each beat is well programmed with a strict attention to detail. The synth soloing and use of expressive effects adds a “human” touch to all of the mechanized sequencing. BMH’s sound embraces electronic music technology as a tool dictated by humans, not the other way around.
Look out for a party later this summer to showcase Burger’s projects and others. Don’t think of it as being your usual concert / DJ type event. It will be more of a performance art piece with visual elements being coupled with each piece. Picture a huge U.F.O., light shows, giant mushrooms, dancing fairies and more to complete the experience. Check out Blue Midnight Highway at
www.myspace.com/bluemidnighthighway. —NM
- The Toledo City Paper
Who Spilled the Beats?
Thursday, 06 August 2009 11:05 Emily Rippe 1890
1 2 3 4 5 (0 votes, average 0 out of 5)
201 Morris St. (next to the Oliver House)
Saturday, August 8
In case you haven't heard, there have been numerous reports of UFO sightings in Toledo. Erich Burger of Blue Midnight Highway Productions is allegedly housing the alien spacecraft at 201 Morris St. (the building next to the Oliver House in Toledo's Downtown Warehouse District). Not to "spill the beats," but the UFO is actually a stage — a piece of art made by Burger himself — where local DJs can perform among the metal and lights of the otherwise barren venue. On Saturday, August 8 local DJs and live performers will gather for "Who Spilled the Beats," a mixed genre show of electro, trance, and hip hop. Featured DJs include Ted Fury, N. Mattimoe, DJ Zu and Todd Perrine. Live performances by Billy Blade, JPX, Mighthaveben and Blue Midnight Highway. Don't miss a special appearance by the Mixed Nuts B-Boy crew. This is an event you'll have to see to believe. 9 p.m. $5. 201 Morris St. For more info, www.myspace.com/bluemidnighthighway.
- Toledo City Paper
Discography
Secret Ninja Singles 2009
lo fi/HI FI Instrumentals 2009
Photos
Bio
The Sound, The Style, The Art, & The Performance…
B.M.H. The Sound and the Style:
Limitless & Expansive
You will find no rules, no formulas. There is nothing that we are afraid to try.
That’s what gets expressed to anyone I work with. No rules but these 3
It must be fresh, it must be dope, and it’s must be listening pleasure…
My base style is sort of a trip hop/Alt. pop mix. Bjork, Tricky, Spank Rock, Linkin Park (reanimation), NIN, Beasties, Portishead, Peter Gabriel, Any one who was somewhat cinematic in their sound BMH gets compared to at one time or another.
I guess the closest definition that fit’s is Trip Hop or Ghetto Tech.
On Secret Ninja Singles You’ll here old school Wax Tracks influence on “Secrets” with some new school twist. On “SHINE” its NIN meets Spank Roc, Meets Marsimoto (“Wingdingsrappor”) under ground German Hip Hop. Strawberry Girls is Bjork / Dead Can dance / Gold Frapp, & Tracks of Wrath is somewhere between the Gorillas & Johnny Cash.
But with every B.M.H. track we hope to send you on a very listenable journey. One where you hear things new to your ears…
We don’t expect to recreate the wheel on every track. Just whenever possible we will head off into territory to explore new things. Especially when technology dictates the relevance of an artist, (i.e.) Jimmy Hendrix became the legend he is by being on the cutting edge of sound as much as he was on the edge with guitar technique. This spirit appears to be absent from today’s rock soundscapes, and smeared by the fluff and glam of the pop and hip hop world.
The Performance:
We go off!!!
UFO”S with light shows, robots, giant mushrooms with dancing forest fairies.
We try to visually represent every song in a visual way (to some extent) We may not build a full size prop for ever song but we do think about what it means to us and try to offer
something that will inspire the emotions of the audience…
Though not every song is meant to be explained, we will enhance its effect with other senses. In short we recruit all of our artist friends and have a giant building session for a few months and try to do the best with what we can find or build ourselves.
But we never freeze our imagination or settle for limitations…
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