Ocean Exposition
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Ocean Exposition

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"Rhythms of the Sea"

Rhythms of the Sea
By: Daniel Shearer , TimeOFF

As a youngster, Tim Conley spent a lot of time at the Jersey Shore, so it seemed logical to name his band, the Ocean Exposition, after his favorite childhood playground.
Performing with Electric Jellyfish, the Yardley, Pa., native had been writing songs with a side project in mind. When the members of Jellyfish went separate ways last year, he approached his roommate, Jon Thompson, a saxophonist and performer with the genre-defying outfit named Lazlo, about putting together a band.
They recruited Ewing drummer Joe Falcey, bassist Jason Fraticelli, a Pennsbury High School alumnus, and started playing at Joe's Mill Hill Saloon in Trenton, John & Peter's in New Hope, Pa., Tritone — a club on South Street in Philadelphia — and Conduit in Trenton, where the band will open the Jazz Mandolin Project's upcoming show. Also at Conduit, the band recently opened for the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, and the avant-garde jazz trio Living Daylights.
"Jellyfish definitely had a lot of jazz influences," Mr. Conley says, "but it also was very funk influenced. (The Ocean Exposition) went more of a rock way, as opposed to funk. It's definitely a jazz fusion, but its got more of a rock vibe than a funk vibe."
Ocean Exposition released its first studio album in January, a dreamy, well-mastered six-track collection recorded at Retromedia Sound Studios in Red Bank.
"Dawn on the Water," the recording's six-minute opening track, begins with the sound of surf and a gentle line on upright bass. Mr. Conley offers clean chords from his hollow-body guitar, while Mr. Thompson delivers the first hint of a melody, which repeatedly passes from sax to guitar and back again. "Ocean Dream" unfolds in five-measure bars, with Mr. Falcey riding light on a cymbal and punctuating the rhythm with an occasional rim shot. "Laughing Dance" is a playful romp with a Latin feel.
"We basically did the whole thing live, in the studio," Mr. Conley says. "Almost every song on there is in odd time signatures, and it really just kind of felt like water, the rhythms of the ocean."

- 4/21/04 TimeOff(Princeton Packet)


""Guitarist Tim Conley's funky standards and improvisations make for stand-out shows""

Posted: 2005-11-11
By Mark Sabbatini

Funky classics. Innovative improvisations. Gritty guitars. No cover charge.
This is why I keep wading through so much muck on the Internet.

Guitarist Tim Conley joins the tiny percentage of jazz artists with a significant amount of quality work available free of charge online with several live performances between July and October of 2005 posted at the Internet Archive.
A July 29 performance features eight songs (and three tuning tracks that can be ignored) in MP3 format totaling about 80 minutes. Five standards serve as bookends for three improvised tunes in the middle of the show. An Oct. 7 show opens with two improvisations before settling into mostly familiar songs by Joe Henderson, Charles Mingus, Henry Mancini, David Bowie and Oscar Hammerstein.
The impressions aren't always an instant hit. The July show opens with Leon Parker's “All My Life” and it takes a bit to get out of the simple funky beat and Conley's minimal distorted guitar lead. The effects are somewhat dialed back and a series of classic rock solos emerge as the 20-minute song progresses. Jason Fraticelli introduces himself well on a more muted stand-up bass interlude, but drummer Dour Hirlinger never strays far from the basics. Compared with many of the other songs, it definitely leaves a mixed impression.
More worthy are a bluesy rendition of Joe Henderson's “Isotope,” a heavily chorused pluck/ strum ballad approach to Radiohead's “The Tourist” and the concluding “Blue Monk,” which features Conley in a catchy yet varying R&B groove and an energetic closing solo by Hirlinger. One can't really pin Conley's style and sound to a particular player, although some of his well thought-out improvisations bring to mind John Scofield's gutsy yet accessible fusion of late.
One might be tempted to group him with more mellow guitarists on the second improvisation of an Oct. 7 show, at least before it evolves into a bit of a trace/beat number toward the end. Ultimately it possesses the good qualities of those 1970s Miles Davis/Weather Report long-form fusion collages - a lot of interesting ideas for those with an open mind. “Softly as a Morning Sunrise” gets something of a Scofield/Wes Montgomery blues treatment and the entire trio proves themselves capable of respectful modern swing chops of “Days of Wine and Roses.”
Sound quality is mostly first-rate as all the instruments are captured and mixed well, although at times crowd noise gets intrusive.
Conley's only album is Ocean Exposition, a self-produced 2004 quartet release that got a review from Emanuel Ferritis of WPRB that stated it sounded like “John McLaughlin's Extrapolation mixed with the ECM sound. Will somebody please sign him?” If the recently posted shows are any indication, there may indeed be more promising releases to come, along with the prospect those who make records take an interest in bringing them to market.
- AllAboutJazz.com


Discography

Ocean Exposition 2003

Photos

Bio

The "Ocean" represents life, evolution and motion.
The unpredictability of the Ocean in Time and Space.
The "Exposition" is the gathering and display of these parts into one big piece of music.
Most of the compositions are connected in someway, either borrowing melodies, grooves
or progressions from one another or simply by connecting one song or improvisation into the next.
What Frank Zappa called "Conceptual Continuity".