Guy Malone

You’re likely to hear it in the trumpet-hook easy swing of “G-String”, one of several showcases for keyboardist Nick Biello’s rich, Bill Evans-informed piano and guest horn player Geoff Cunningham’s pinched, vigorously melodic mute trumpet lines. Or the walking bassline and post-bop exuberance conjured in this CD’s lead title, “Geppetto’s Lament”, which ranges from melancholy to joyous and nearly everything in between. Even the baseball-lover ballad “Mookie Wilson”, a low-calorie pop-jazz confection, is treated with a loving, detailed arrangement, bouncing with grin at its top and embracing a ponderous, moody blues ride out. The nearly twelve minute “Monkey”, recorded live sidestage at last year’s moe.down captures the band’s live experience; a bruising, take-no-prisoners Brett Calabrese guitar solo, turned over to a double-time, failed-brakes instrumental climax.

But we suspect these guys have plenty of live tapes – this studio CD is an absolute revelation, though; graceful and generous, melodic and impressionistic. It’d be criminal to incarcerate this band, at least in its full horn-complimented configuration, behind the cage bars of a “jamband” label. Outstanding.
- Dave Kirby - review you

Guy Malone performed at moe.down 4 in Turin NY
Guy Malone release new CD entitled "Orbs North" available at Home Grown Music Network - Ben Kay

Guy Malone
Spook The Pigeons
Independent

By Dave Terpeny, KyndMusic Editor

The first thing I thought of when I picked up this Connecticut trio’s album was the crazy homeless guy I saw in New York who kept screaming over and over again, in a very shrill voice, “Don’t kick the f**kin’ pigeons!” But that’s a story for another time and is completely irrelevant.

What may also be completely irrelevant is not the source of the band’s name but rather a coincidental alignment of words. You see, there is actually a Guy Malone.

The ‘real’ Guy Malone claims to be a former UFO abductee and is the founder of the Roswell, New Mexico Alien Resistance Headquarters. In a nutshell he believes that the Bible is rife with UFO stories as the aliens are in fact an angelic and heavenly host. This host is responsible for the majority of figures represented in world mythology, exist to try and turn mankind away from God, and represent the beginning of the End Times. Oh, and the only way to stop the abductions is to become born again.

Is your head spinning yet? Good, it should be. Trying to decipher this very nice man’s very insane philosophy is fun, challenging, and seductive: What if he’s right?

And now I have a better understanding of the band. In a similar way they are fun, challenging, and seductive.

The album starts with a roaring almost heavy metal assault on your senses and slowly twists and turns its way through some amazingly brilliant acrobatics. It slowly deconstructs the wall of sound in “Sticks and Stones” into the jammy funk of the title track. This is then further disassembled into the rollicking ska-tinged “John’s Camera” which moves into the reggae of “Pipe Dream.”

By the time they return full circle with the hard-rocking “Fine Day” they have you convinced that heavy metal, ska, funk, reggae and the kitchen sink are all the same music. Gone are genre boundaries, gone are labels, and your head spins. You can’t quite believe what you’ve heard but you know you liked it, as improbable as it sounds. And you think: What if they’re right?

I hope that they are.
- Dave Terpeny, KyndMusic Editor

The three guys in Guy Malone are remarkably efficient for a jamband. There is very little wasted space in their songwriting. In a way, it's textbook hippie composition -- odd timed sections veering into one another, guitar flourishes and melodic doohickeys, guitar solos cut by the occasional chorus. Even so, at least on Spook the Pigeons, there's (almost) always something going on, always a sense of forward motion through the material. It's impressive and enjoyable, despite a few blander tunes (the instrumental funk excursion "Shadowboy," and even that resolves into an interesting Santana-like mid-section). The songs are far from mature, though are articulate and well-delivered for what they are. "John's Camera," especially, is catchy as all hell. Other bits - like the transition track "Supercapacity" - sound like (geeze) early Phish. When the band merely grooves, they sound like they're treading water. To the Umph they should listen, and shred shred shred. Oblique Strategies sez: "Courage." - Jesse Jarnow - Jambands.com